Toronto 906 Yonge Street | 139.17m | 40s | Gupta | Arcadis

Medieval, Tudor and Victorian

Interesting comment about Victorian architecture and medieval knights and turrets considering that the knights were around between 400-1400's and the Victorian era was from 1837 to 1901. The Tudor architecture was of course in Tudor times that were from 1485-1603. To be more correct, Ridpath's is a Tudor style and not Victorian style - so I stand corrected on that point.
 
adma said:
As a retention, it isn't as silly as the Lyle Studio or RCMI. Or maybe it's less silly for its being, er, "sillier" (i.e. hyperactively Gatsby-era Olde English, i.e. makes a better facadist folly for the fact)
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Hence my suggestion that they preserve it entirely as an intact folly ( rather than reduce it to sad little facades like the Lyle and RCMI fronts ) and relocate it up there on the roof - with a little garden and a water feature, and set it back from the street so only the residents can "enjoy" it.

The elevator, by the way, is quite magnificent!
 
As for the validity of resurrecting styles from the past, well, everything is valid ... but it depends what you do with that style, qualitatively. The Liberty building in London - which adma refers to - is an apt comparison, since the fad for Tudor Revival fed a niche market for retail establishments and hefty trophy homes for the new mercantile class ( South Rosedale, I'm lookin' at you ... ) at that time, rather than inspiring anything that was new. Edwardian Baroque was another revival style that didn't lead to anything, and I can't see that the Georgian Revival from that era did much either. For the most part, I think Victorian Mock Goth, and the revival styles that crowded the early years of the 20th century, are an eccentric interregnum before the great Modernist project began. As a diversion, they certainly retarded the potential for new forms that began to suggest itself when Paxton designed his building for the 1851 Exhibition, for instance, for a couple of generations. Of "revival" in general, and importing foreign styles, when Inigo Jones built Neo Classical buildings in England in the early 17th century he was importing a "revival" style from Italy, via Palladio, that had little local context yet it had much creative influence, as did the Baroque that temporarily followed it, and those initiatives are generally awarded the respect due to them that "North American Tudor" of the Ridpath variety doesn't warrant.
 
Hmm, sounds like US is portraying Postmodern-era (well, post-Beaux-Arts-at-MoMA) architectural historiography as an "eccentric interregnum" relative to the true-and-proper Giedion narrative...or something...

Anyway, keep the Ridpath facade at ground level, thank you. It's harmless. (And locationally as well as aesthetically--remember: the facade's always been the Ridpath's logo for a reason--it's one place where even ground-level facadism makes sense; so don't let the Lyle Studio travesty paint all such stuff with a negative brush.)

Now, if there are any significant extant interiors, maybe their parts can be reused for interior common-space purposes (though the ground-floor display spaces seem to have been concrete-utilitarian from the getgo)
 
The generic budget buster design of this proposal is depressing considering it's a more upscale area. It'd be sad if the Ridpaths building wasn't preserved.
 
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Its Tudor Revival architecture should be judged on its design details. Revivals were all the rage back then even among the most modern designers up to WWI. (The most modern tended to create simplified Gothic designs.) Reviving the Tudor style was just a creative alternative.
 
There's a special place in hell reserved for Richard Norman Shaw - it's called Craigside. His neighbours on either side are Anthony Salvin, who is forced to live in Harlaxton Manor for all eternity, and Robert Kerr, who is condemned to roam the halls of Bearwood in perpetuity.
 
Wait... I thought the developer had to preserve this facade!

They better, or this strip will have lost the last interesting feature it possesses.
 
Urban Shocker said:
There's a special place in hell reserved for Richard Norman Shaw - it's called Craigside. His neighbours on either side are Anthony Salvin, who is forced to live in Harlaxton Manor for all eternity, and Robert Kerr, who is condemned to roam the halls of Bearwood in perpetuity.
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In english?
 
You could always Google the architects and the faux monstrosities they designed, which tie into the Tudorbethan style we're discussing.
 
Well, variety is nice I think. And perhaps the Ridpath's came from England and had been in the furniture business for years? Maybe their English business was in a Tudor building?

I think that bit of England belongs in Toronto, in 2011. (Compare to a tudor-style mcmansion built today! no comparison!)
 
urbandreamer said:
I think that bit of England belongs in Toronto, in 2011. (Compare to a tudor-style mcmansion built today! no comparison!)
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Well, half-timbered houses can be dismantled - when I lived in Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, England, in the late '70s an elderly woman was reassembling her family home there, which she'd shipped half way across the country.
 
... and, of course, Sir Christopher Wren's St. Mary the Virgin Aldermanbury - the exterior, anyway, which survived the London Blitz - was shipped across the pond and reassembled in Fulton, Missouri in the 1960s. But 906 Yonge is common or garden faux, not the genuine article.
 
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