Interestingly, two of the replies find the new opera house to be the ugliest of Toronto's buildings. Very interesting:
Ugliest buildings: Your picks
If Star readers had a rocket launcher, Toronto's skyline wouldn't look the same
Aug. 27, 2006. 07:57 AM
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Last week, Christopher Hume wrote about the lack of coherent urban planning that has allowed Toronto to raise unfortunate buildings while razing fine ones. We asked readers to send in their candidates for ugliest edifice. It seems Torontonians can be quite impassioned in their hatred of some buildings. A selection of responses:
I couldn't let this pass me by. This is my chance to beef about the new high-rise apartment buildings that everyone driving through the city on the Gardner Expressway is forced to look at. The buildings in particular are those with the dreadful dark blue windows. We're treated to more of them across from the Rogers Centre on Spadina. Since they look pretty bad now, what are they going to look like in 10 years?
I am not against high-rise buildings. It is quite possible to create attractive buildings that enhance the skyline, but I'm afraid the builders have missed the mark here.
The most ill-conceived, poorly planned building and soon to be the greatest eyesore in Toronto is the new addition to the ROM.
The new addition to the ROM, the "luminous veil" on the Bloor St. viaduct, just about anything that involves an architect's pathetic attempt to add a new addition to an old or historic structure.
A ruling government with antiquated policies and procedures runs our multicultural city. People with sheer boredom with no character or colour designed our buildings.
I nominate as the ugliest building in Toronto the Graduate House of the University of Toronto at Harbord and Spadina. It is so Soviet bloc ugly that it almost defies description. Tiny windows in a city where light is at a premium most of the year; ugly, dreary facade, with an incredibly stupid "O" that hangs over the street. Ychhh!
Communal building vacant in style and conviction on a rambling scale. Soulless, dull additions of inconceivable blandness, artificial architecture void of symbolic heroic theatre found within.
225 Jarvis (Grand Hotel): as RCMP headquarters, it was an honest structure. Now gussied with stucco, it's suburban junk fitting an airport strip.
Building at Bathurst & Queens Quay W.: It's a big, huge cement building called the Canada Malting Co. that obstructs the view of the Harbourfront and is SO UGLY!
That big barn on Bathurst and Bloor: Ed Mirvish's Bargain Palace or whatever. Can't remember the name; I think I blocked it out. That is the tackiest neon, Vegas-style eyesore I have ever seen.
When listing the ugliest buildings in Toronto, the Star building at One Yonge Street can't be ignored. And sadly, this concrete eyesore, which is most offensive at pedestrian level, is situated at a strategic focal point of our long-awaited waterfront.
The Rogers Centre: when the roof is closed.
Bravo on your Sunday (most worthy of the front page) article on the sterility of Toronto's supposed "new" and "modern" architecture.
On the corner of Charles St. W. & St. Thomas, there are three or four delightful gingerbread brick homes that will be victims of that vile wrecking ball within the next few months.
In their company is a now lopped-off 80-year-old oak tree that shaded the street for years.
Of course, there are the ever-being-constructed half-empty condos. Is there anything we can do to save these beautiful historic homes and buildings?
The absolutely worst building in Toronto is the oldest. It's the monstrosity on Yonge near the Greek restaurant/North York "town centre." Knock it down!
Dundas Square, no lie: The Eaton Centre is a perfect overseas cousin to Dragon City. You can thank expansion and H&M for that. Everything, from the AD-dictive, overgrown posters — and the building on the northeast corner that takes over 15 years to build — to the people who flock to Yonge and Dundas, heartless people from all walks of life, with nothing but disregard for other people. Oh and the police cameras now cherry-top the cake ...
First Canadian Place: The entire façade of the building is falling apart! It's owned by a bank ... surely they have the funds to fix it.
Four Seasons Opera House: charcoal box! Had the building been raised off of the ground with walkthroughs, with something like an art park, it would have looked better.
My nomination goes to the new Four Seasons Opera House. Brutal is too kind a description for the Richmond façade, not to mention that horrible bleak box built as a cover for the fly tower. Severe, unpleasant, unimaginative and empty describe for me the overall appearance.
77 Elm St. (a.k.a. The Nightmare on Elm Street): brutalist, concrete, with a five-storey above-ground parking garage at its base, and seemingly random, pointless sun blinders jutting out from the windows.
