Top 10 Favourite Toronto Rooms

[adma]

One church missing from this thread: St Anne's on Gladstone (aka the Group Of Seven church)

And a couple of modest Anglo-Catholic incense-heavy gems: Eden Smith's St Thomas on Huron St, and Henry Langley's St Matthias on Bellwoods...

 

[thecharioteer]

Massey Hall Sidney Badgley, 1894:

The Conservatory at Casa Loma E.J. Lennox. 1911-1914

 

[jn_12]

One church missing from this thread: St Anne's on Gladstone (aka the Group Of Seven church)

And a couple of modest Anglo-Catholic incense-heavy gems: Eden Smith's St Thomas on Huron St, and Henry Langley's St Matthias on Bellwoods...

I didn't know about St Anne's but a quick search suggests it deserves to be right up there with the others.

 

[Urban Shocker]

( as an aside, I've noticed that the interior west wall of Henry Bowyer Lane's Church of the Holy Trinity, beside the Eaton Centre, has developed some large cracks over the past year or two. One possibility is that they're a result of vibration from the underground delivery ramp to Sears, which is built right against the foundations of the Church - trucks enter from Bay Street and curve to the north around the west side of the church - but apparently it's more likely that they're a result of seasonal expansion and contraction caused by the repair of the roof with steel trusses rather than wood, after the fire of 1977 ).

 

[Urban Shocker]

Metopolitan United Church

The glass used in the lanterns suspended from the ceiling was salvaged from the stained glass that survived the major fire of 1928. McCausland, the local stained glass firm, did all of the new windows in the Church - though there are some small ones at the north east corner of the building that were moved there from another church recently.

http://www.360virtualtours.ca/demo/metro.html

 

[thecharioteer]

( as an aside, I've noticed that the interior west wall of Henry Bowyer Lane's Church of the Holy Trinity, beside the Eaton Centre, has developed some large cracks over the past year or two. One possibility is that they're a result of vibration from the underground delivery ramp to Sears, which is built right against the foundations of the Church - trucks enter from Bay Street and curve to the north around the west side of the church - but apparently it's more likely that they're a result of seasonal expansion and contraction caused by the repair of the roof with steel trusses rather than wood, after the fire of 1977 ).

Perhaps the building is settling because of the ancient creek that once traversed the property as evidenced in the 1845 map of Terauley Cottage (Albert Street to the south):

1858:

 

[Urban Shocker]

When I chatted to the clergyman, and another man there who wrote the guidebooks, the creek was mentioned but I believe it has been buried/diverted a couple of times - most recently when they excavated for the Eaton Centre and Bell Trinity building. There are some fascinating photographs of the huge excavation, on display in the church, and reproductions of Henry Bowyer Lane's other buildings. Well worth a visit. Lovely stained glass, four windows of which date from just after the fire.

 

[Ladies Mile]

Indeed, our grand churches have exceptional rooms for worship. Our cathedrals deserve more recognition. None are even recognized as National Historic Sites, though they are quite historical. Perhaps we don't promote them as much because as we grew into a great metropolitan city, we didn't build even grander cathedrals with our rise in importance. Religion declined in the years of transformation to metropolis. Nonetheless, though they were built for a smaller city, we should take pride in these great spaces, promote them, and maybe even seek some design inspiration from them.

Why?

 

[adma]

If you have to ask, well...yup, I guess we should discard them. Religious superstition has no place in our modern society, nor does fetishizing the spaces in which said superstition was conducted and advanced. Fine? Fine.

 

[67Cup]

If you have to ask, well...yup, I guess we should discard them. Religious superstition has no place in our modern society, nor does fetishizing the spaces in which said superstition was conducted and advanced. Fine? Fine.

Did that make you feel better? Good. Now perhaps we could go back to the discussion of beautiful interior spaces, some of which have been dedicated to religious purposes.

 

[FAC33]

If you have to ask, well...yup, I guess we should discard them. Religious superstition has no place in our modern society, nor does fetishizing the spaces in which said superstition was conducted and advanced. Fine? Fine.

One of the common picks on this thread for beautiful interior spaces is Calatrava's design for the atrium at Brookfield Place--often called a modern secular cathedral. There's nothing wrong with beautiful spaces designed for worship, even for an agnostic like me--but the truly amazing are often either several centuries old (e.g. Chartres Cathedral) or architecturally original works in their own right (e.g. Wright's Unity Temple). Most of our churches here are lovely, and they certainly are historic, but most are not outstanding architecture.

Frankly, I see a place for appreciation of both types (architectural gems and historical gems) and sometimes they even intersect. Metropolitan United is a beautiful space, although nothing revolutionary as architecture.

 

[junctionist]

Did that make you feel better? Good. Now perhaps we could go back to the discussion of beautiful interior spaces, some of which have been dedicated to religious purposes.

I think adma's comment was meant as a sarcastic reply to the comment that preceded it, as blunt and open-ended as it was. A cathedral interior should be an inspirational space through architecture and art. Religious leaders successfully created such spaces in Toronto, though that was when the city was much smaller and not the national metropolis. Even if you're not a believer, you can enjoy such cultural achievements. The city was more conservative and architecture reflected that, but it wasn't inferior work. The expressions of Gothic design are fine, and the architecture is in fact remarkable. In the past, urban growth would have meant even grander and more monumental projects to either expand the cathedral or build a new one, but the dynamic changed as Toronto grew.

 

[67Cup]

I hope you are right that I missed some overtones of Adma's remark. If taken at face value, as an actual statement of his own opinion, it was stupid, intolerant and offensive.

 

[adma]

And that was, indeed, my point. (But this being the Internet with all its message-board nutbars, non-sarcastic versions of such sentiment aren't necessarily that hard to come by.)

 

[67Cup]

And that was, indeed, my point. (But this being the Internet with all its message-board nutbars, non-sarcastic versions of such sentiment aren't necessarily that hard to come by.)

My apologies, then, for missing the intended tone. I fell into the "sarchasm" which is the gap between those who get irony and those who do not!