Toronto Architecture From The 1960's and 70's

[EVCco]

Submitted for your approval, the Donald D. Summerville "Olympic" Pools at Woodbine Beach - famously not quite olympic regulation size due to a measuring miscalculation - but still a striking landmark. Some pics from Google image search:

Hard to find much info about it. Even the article in Concrete Toronto just says it was "built in the early 1960s" by "local architects."

 

[LowPolygon]

...the Donald D. Summerville "Olympic" Pools at Woodbine Beach - famously not quite olympic regulation size due to a measuring miscalculation - but still a striking landmark. Some pics from Google image search:

Hard to find much info about it. Even the article in Concrete Toronto just says it was "built in the early 1960s" by "local architects."

fantastic, thank you! i've long admired this structure.

 

[LowPolygon]

Are they also the same WZMH firm architects
that designed my personal favorite new style Toronto building complex: The Royal Bank Towers/Centre?

indeed they are.
Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Royal Bank Plaza, 1972-1976

 

[mattelderca]

fantastic, thank you! i've long admired this structure.

Nice! I swam there when I was in grade 1. We would walk down, by ourselves!, from Corley and Woodbine and spend the day there. I wonder if the giant communal showers are still in use as you enter?

 

[thecharioteer]

Great thread, deepend!

Regarding the Margaret Daly article on WZMH, a few years later (after the election of David Crombie) she did another article on two very different architects who would transform the way we look at the city (and whose influence is still strong today, when one thinks of the firms that descended from Diamond & Myers, namely KPMB, Diamond & Schmitt and HPA):

 

[thecharioteer]

One must also remember the political and social context of development in Toronto in the early 1970's:

From the "Toronto Citizen" newspaper (note that the map on the left illustrates parking lots downtown):

 

[thecharioteer]

And as far as buildings are concerned from the 60's and 70's, we would be remiss in not mentioning O'Keefe Centre and the St. Lawrence Centre:

Opening night of O'Keefe Centre, October 1, 1960:

1970's postcard:

 

[adma]

It might have been dated among many of the elite tastemakers, but given how many buildings appeared with neo-expressionistic Modernist architecture in the decade, it can be said that it was part of the style of the time. Such architecture even appeared in prominent places like certain Expo 67 pavilions--an event conceived of in the 1960s. It's normal for a decade or more to go by for what's current among visionaries to alter the architectural landscape through actual projects in the mainstream. Robert Venturi started to advance his Postmodern vision in the 1960s, but some of the most current and significant Postmodern buildings didn't appear until the 1980s, when that style became dominant.

Sort of; but not quite, or not completely. There *was* a subtle difference--a little like that btw/ Expo 67 and the NY Word's Fair of 64/65. Or, for that matter, the above-illustrated O'Keefe and St Lawrence Centres. Or further for that matter, talke the namesake of the above-illustrated pool: btw/Mayor Nathan Phillips and his successors Summerville and Givens--Phillips may have wrenched Toronto into cosmopolitanism, but the personages of Summerville/Givens were much more imbued with that new-age cosmopolitanism (which may be why voters rejected Phillips on behalf of Summerville--who on account of his death in office, might be the most underrated "mayor-figure" in post-WWII Toronto history)

 

[LowPolygon]

And as far as buildings are concerned from the 60's and 70's, we would be remiss in not mentioning O'Keefe Centre and the St. Lawrence Centre:

thank you for contributing those! It seems almost incredible that the opening of O'Keefe Centre in 1960 with the premiere of Camelot was considered the most significant 'high culture' event in Toronto since the first opening night at Massey Hall in 1896!

although 65 years is a long time between big culture-defining moments, if one digs into the archives a bit, it quickly becomes apparent that this is in fact an accurate assessment of its importance.

Camelot was written by Lerner and Loewe, and was the most widely anticipated Broadway show of its time, the follow-up to their monster hit My Fair Lady. It was directed by Broadway legend Moss Hart and starred rising British star Richard Burton and the very famous Julie Andrews. so, as an ‘opening night’ it’s true that nothing in the cultural history of Toronto up to that point could be considered remotely close to it in importance.

Oddly, it also seems to be an extraordinarily star-crossed event. first the producer, then the director, and finally the director of the O’Keefe itself were all hospitalized in the days following the gala opening…

 

[Blovertis]

Gordon Sinclair's column talks about Massey Hall in the past tense. From this vantage point, it seems certain that it will outlive the O'Keefe/Hummingbird/Sony Centre.

 

[k10ery]

Massey Hall opened in 1894, not 1896 as Sinclair wrote. But more importantly, how does he think John A Macdonald appeared there? In his coffin?

 

[LowPolygon]

Massey Hall opened in 1894, not 1896 as Sinclair wrote. But more importantly, how does he think John A Macdonald appeared there? In his coffin?

i think that article comes "the time before fact check"

 

[k10ery]

Yes, google and wikipedia must be both blessing and curse in the journalism business nowadays. (As Margaret Wente has discovered.)

 

[LowPolygon]

.

 

[junctionist]

The University Avenue corridor looks great without any traffic signals mounted over the roadway in that photo, thedeepend. The landscape design, while sophisticated, doesn't seem very well thought out. It generally has walkways and areas for pedestrians in the median, but it's a series of disjointed islands separated by wide intersections, with no provisions to allow people to cross north/south to take in the ornamental median blocks at a time. (For that matter, the walkways on the median islands don't line up.) The monuments thus feel isolated, which is never good for commemoration. It's landscape design that seems to be meant to be taken in at 50 km/h, not 5 km/h. Too bad. It could use a rethink. At the same time, I'd like to know more about the landscape design's history, as I saw that the Toronto Archives has a large collection of files dedicated to the project from the landscape design firm involved. Even if a half century later it seems flawed, it was a high-profile project that is interesting from an urban design history perspective.