Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now

[Mustapha]

Well, if the Rotunda and Walker House already existed by the time the Romanesque N Block of Union Station was built (instead of the treed space in the foreground), such a photo might have been technically impossible...

My gramps told me of his arrival here in 1918 at this station. Mentioned whenever we were in the area. Was his way of re-living that big day I suppose.

 

[adma]

I don't know why I said "Rotunda" when I should have said "Cyclorama", though it's probably excusable. Anyway...

I'm wondering what that Romanesque foundation to the right is--were there more built elements to the Union Station complex planned?

 

[thecharioteer]

Thanks to that useful link, I found this illustration of Toronto's first Union Station.
I've never see a photograph that shows the whole complex as well as this sketch.
Does such a photo exist?

Here are a few from some different angles, starting with the floor plan:

 

[wwwebster]

I walked by an archeological dig at the northwest corner of Eastern and Sackville on Saturday.

Here's a view of the area from 1936. Cherry Street proceeds south from Eastern in the upper right of the image:

https://gencat4.eloquent-systems.co...source//ser372/ss0033/s0372_ss0033_it0092.jpg

 

[LowPolygon]

I walked by an archeological dig at the northwest corner of Eastern and Sackville on Saturday. It's on the Inglenook school grounds. According to the Toronto District School Board Facebook page, there used to be a candle factory on the site.

It's fenced off of course so I couldn't go inside, nor would I dare, but through the magic of a super telephoto lens I was able to take pictures of some of the artifacts from outside the fence.

beautiful! amazing to see that fragment of 'blue white' porcelain (no doubt imported from England) and the old pipe, and know that they used to belong to someone; someone ate off that plate, a man held that pipe in his hands. i imagine you could dig this deep, and this carefully, in hundreds of other sites around the city and find similar things....

 

[Goldie]

Most Unique Building

I'v always thought of the Cyclorama as the most unique structure ever built in Toronto.
I wonder how it could be used today, if it had been preserved.
I've seen few, if any, images of the Cyclorama's interior.

 

[thecharioteer]

I'v always thought of the Cyclorama as the most unique structure ever built in Toronto.
I wonder how it could be used today, if it had been preserved.
I've seen few, if any, images of the Cyclorama's interior.

Interesting article from Heritage Toronto:

http://www.heritagetoronto.org/node/4109

"After paying their admission fee of twenty-five cents at the Front Street entrance, visitors passed through a dark corridor and mounted a ramp to a platform positioned in the centre of the building. From there they had a panoramic view of the paintings, seven metres in height, encircling the interior. Vast in scope and meticulous in detail, the Cyclorama's depictions were researched and reconstructed by artists using whatever documentary means available, including fieldwork and interviews with survivors. In addition to the visual trickery of the paintings, whose angles and proportions created the illusion of distance, soil, plants and various props were used outside the canvases to further blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. The effect on the Victorian audience was pronounced. As historian Graham Watts writes, "the painting's verisimilitude and the Cyclorama experience impressed itself upon the spectator in a very real way."

In December 1889 the exhibition was replaced by what one newspaperman called "without exception, the grandest picture that has been exhibited in this city," this time showing in vivid colours the carnage wrought in the American Civil War. The Battle of Gettysburg planted spectators square on the smouldering battlefield of 3 July 1863, where an estimated forty-eight thousand men lay dead or wounded. The Daily Mail was effusive in its praise: "It is a wild weird picture, which makes the blood of the spectator pulsate quicker through his veins, and a picture which when once seen can never be forgotten." ......

In the summer of 1893 the Cyclorama mounted what was to be its last exhibit, one of a religious nature. Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion depicted a scene of no small importance to the churchgoing of Toronto the Good. According to the authors of Toronto Illustrated 1893, "The figures stand out in bold relief, and seem to be the living, moving beings who are actually performing their separate parts in that greatest drama the world ever beheld."........

 

[Goldie]

Thanks for that info, thecharioteer.
Perhaps the Cyclorama was the 3-D cinema of its day - just a gimmick that was destined to pass.

 

[designer1]

The one on the bottom is now AVENUE ROAD, a very snazzy furniture and design store. Its on Eastern Avenue, 415 I think.

 

[thecharioteer]

Thanks for that info, thecharioteer.
Perhaps the Cyclorama was the 3-D cinema of its day - just a gimmick that was destined to pass.

Another view during its "Petrie" phase:

And a bit further west (imagine if that block had survived and found new uses today...sigh):

 

[adma]

You mean this, of course.

 

[J T CUNNINGHAM]

My thoughts, I see, were also mixed(up)!

Regards,
J T

 

[LowPolygon]

.

 

[Goldie]

from my old files

That photo reminded me of the "Then & Now" I created 6 years ago:

 

[Mustapha]

.

Washington DC still has its Cyclorama dating from 1886. Viewed it as a teenager.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/interactives/cyclorama/index.html