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Oddfellows Hall 450 Yonge @ Carlton (?, 5s addition, ERA)

This city won't rest until every single heritage structure has a soulless, ugly glass hat squatting on its roof. I just can't wait for the day that a vertical addition is proposed for this building's neighbour to the south.
 
This city won't rest until every single heritage structure has a soulless, ugly glass hat squatting on its roof. I just can't wait for the day that a vertical addition is proposed for this building's neighbour to the south.

Original plan for College Park

Screen Shot 2016-03-03 at 9.25.24 AM.png


http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2010/01/then-and-now-eatons-college-park
 

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It was the 1970s. I suppose we can be thankful they didn't demolish the entire thing for surface parking.

Though actually, the 70s interior went beyond the call of duty in leaving well enough alone at the ground level, maintaining the Yonge-side interior arcade (truly one of Toronto's great Deco interiors) and all. Trouble is, the resulting "Shops at College Park" felt like a mummified and forlorn faux-deco white elephant from Day 1--thus, it all wound up being subdivided into Winners et al a quarter century later, and the glam but space-hogging arcade obliterated from view. And all the *real* action is in the commonplace concourse level.
 
Though actually, the 70s interior went beyond the call of duty in leaving well enough alone at the ground level, maintaining the Yonge-side interior arcade (truly one of Toronto's great Deco interiors) and all. Trouble is, the resulting "Shops at College Park" felt like a mummified and forlorn faux-deco white elephant from Day 1--thus, it all wound up being subdivided into Winners et al a quarter century later, and the glam but space-hogging arcade obliterated from view. And all the *real* action is in the commonplace concourse level.

What is made can be unmade - I foresee the possibility in the future of that space being made whole again.

AoD
 
What is made can be unmade - I foresee the possibility in the future of that space being made whole again.

AoD

Indeed, I believe at the time of the most recent conversion, provision was made for alterations to be "reversible" to some degree or another. (That's why elements of the arcade remain behind the drywalled subdivided shops--including, of course, the wooden escalater in the space that became DeBoers.)
 
Indeed, I believe at the time of the most recent conversion, provision was made for alterations to be "reversible" to some degree or another. (That's why elements of the arcade remain behind the drywalled subdivided shops--including, of course, the wooden escalater in the space that became DeBoers.)

And even if it can't, there are probably sufficient records remaining to reconstruct it - if they can pull it off for Carlu, they can certainly do so in this case.

AoD
 
And that's the curious taketh-vs-giveth-away undercurrent here: the street-level ghost boutique mall serving as a smoke screen for the mothballing and endless rumours and uncertain future of the Carlu space. Then when they euthanized/subdivided the original street level space configuration, the Carlu came to be...
 

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