What a beautiful original pretty much destroyed by renovation. Why does almost everything we touch in this town turn to shit? What makes us so collectively horrible?
Yonge St., looking north from south of Adelaide St. 1900 TPL
EVENT: The fall of Pretoria was celebrated in Toronto on 30 May (prematurely) and 5 June 1900.
It looks like those barrels are a mid-block construction barrier for something going on down the road - faintly in the background. I wonder if they needed a permit for that back then.
What a beautiful original pretty much destroyed by renovation. Why does almost everything we touch in this town turn to shit? What makes us so collectively horrible?
Architectural erosion as I (or more perhaps Steward Brand) refer to it- the smaller, more fragile/replaceable things that are integral to the design like windows, storefronts and cornices reach their end-of-life and are replaced, but the majority tastes of the society that does the replacing have changed, meaning that the original architectural intent is no longer followed. In some cases it's one fell swoop (in name of modernization), in others erosion by a thousand little cuts.
It's not unsimilar like how Gothic cathedrals cycled through different styles as they were built and renovated, except contemporary society no longer has a single style, and has forgotten largely how to design old buildings- hence erosion. Ironically, it's happening even now to Modernist and Brutalist structures.
More so, technological change, economics and skill erosion means that alternatives to the original materials may be sought- and because the original architectural intent has already been disregarded, some of these become accepted methods of renovation even if they go entirely against the design of the building (see EIFs).
Toronto downtown 1928 ..........Royal York Hotel and Toronto Star buildings under construction..............City Hall Clock Tower is one of the few tall structures................Photo by Gordon Jarrett
Yonge St., looking north from south of Adelaide St. 1900 TPL
EVENT: The fall of Pretoria was celebrated in Toronto on 30 May (prematurely) and 5 June 1900.
