Yonge Street Revitalization (Downtown Yonge BIA/City of Toronto)

[Urban Shocker]

Do you really believe that "legions" of people are still very much drawn to the area? For what? To buy clothes or running shoes or music in chain stores that they can find in most other places? The Sams signs are neon and the appeal of saving them is primarily nostalgic since neon isn't used much any more - and celebrating the days when Yonge and Dundas were a magnet to legions of people is also an exercise in nostalgia.

 

[Tewder]

Do you really believe that "legions" of people are still very much drawn to the area? For what?

... well just judging by the crowds at Yonge/Dundas I'd say yes. The crowd itself is a draw, no? Just Look at the masses huddled around Eros in Piccadilly... and having recently crossed Times Square while running late to a theatre I can assure you it is elbow to elbow there too, and positively nobody is caring much at all about Architecture yet there they are!

The Sams signs are neon and the appeal of saving them is primarily nostalgic since neon isn't used much any more - and celebrating the days when Yonge and Dundas were a magnet to legions of people is also an exercise in nostalgia.

Absolutely it is nostalgia, but there is heritage value in it as well.

 

[Long Island Mike]

I see your point, Ladies Mile, but I don't necessarily agree.

The halcyon days of the Yonge street strip, from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, was always about a certain urban character rather than aesthetic. The aesthetic was a response to that character, and almost nothing exists of the original. Retaining the historic facades is, to me, a bit dishonest, since they never played any role in the Yonge street we knew and loved (they were covered up in neon ads), and, with few exceptions (like that Moorish building beside Zanzibar) are not particularly noteworthy.

Yonge street's character is long gone largely because it was of a time and place that is long gone. The Yonge street of Going down the Road was sort of that ne plus ultra of North American cosmopolitanism of the late 1960s which involved a comingling of the intellectual and the carnal pursuits: late night book and record stores adjacent to porno theatres; the porno theatres, however, showing films that might end up to be cult classics, while the book stores dabbling in their share of smut. When I think about it, Playboy magazine captured the essence of this culture very well, with its topless photos sandwiched between interviews with notable authors. It was all very exciting back in those days, but it doesn't hold up in today's world where sex, sexuality and intellectualism are conceived very differently.

Other than the Bohemian village around Gerrard street which was demolished to make way for hospital loading docks and parking lots, it's hard to think of a neighbourhood which has had the life sucked out of it quite as much as the Yonge street strip. Adma's right: it's low end mall retail in mediocre buildings; whatever commercialism is left over is of the crassest, most unimaginative kind (backlit posters for American apparel that are basically newspaper ads blown up 500X and printed on vinyl). I think Yonge between Dundas and Gerrard is the second cheesiest street in Ontario after Clifton Hill, and at least in the latter's case it admits to being a tourist trap in a tourist trap city, without ever having had the distinction of being the main commercial street for a major city.

H-D: I found your overview on the Yonge Street Downtown Strip interesting...thanks to my membership here at UT I have noticed myself the changes there because of all the pictures and insight posted on how it has changed...
I do agree with you about Niagara Falls' Clifton Hill area being basically a tourist trap area...
LI MIKE

 

[adma]

I see your point, Ladies Mile, but I don't necessarily agree.

The halcyon days of the Yonge street strip, from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, was always about a certain urban character rather than aesthetic. The aesthetic was a response to that character, and almost nothing exists of the original. Retaining the historic facades is, to me, a bit dishonest, since they never played any role in the Yonge street we knew and loved (they were covered up in neon ads), and, with few exceptions (like that Moorish building beside Zanzibar) are not particularly noteworthy.

Or, of course, John Lyle's Thornton-Smith among the exceptions.

And, for that matter, the Reynolds Block was also an exception--and one where, in the 70s, the de-signing and sandblasting was a valid (if doomed) gesture of "currency".

Other than the Bohemian village around Gerrard street which was demolished to make way for hospital loading docks and parking lots, it's hard to think of a neighbourhood which has had the life sucked out of it quite as much as the Yonge street strip. Adma's right: it's low end mall retail in mediocre buildings; whatever commercialism is left over is of the crassest, most unimaginative kind (backlit posters for American apparel that are basically newspaper ads blown up 500X and printed on vinyl). I think Yonge between Dundas and Gerrard is the second cheesiest street in Ontario after Clifton Hill, and at least in the latter's case it admits to being a tourist trap in a tourist trap city, without ever having had the distinction of being the main commercial street for a major city.

Though as per my point: oddly enough, said mediocre retail is not all along the street, but hyper-concentrated along one blockfront...

 

[freshcutgrass]

The halcyon days of the Yonge street strip, from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, was always about a certain urban character rather than aesthetic. The aesthetic was a response to that character, and almost nothing exists of the original.

Yonge street's character is long gone largely because it was of a time and place that is long gone.

I couldn't agree more. But unless you were there, there's no way to convey that....even by showing vintage pictures (because you're right, it wasn't in the aesthetics). And certainly not by what may remain of cheap imitations of Yonge Street's authentic cheap look of the 70's. I find it humorous when people compare Dundas Square to Times Square. The seediness of Yonge in the 70's was actually a lot like Times Square at the time (until the sh*t hit the fan in the summer of '77).

There are a few holdouts that bring the experience back a little....I still get my hair cut at House Of Lords. The music they blare isn't the same, but the place still feels 70's. Roaming around Elliot's Books has that feel too. And I still root for the bit of "smut" that has managed to stay.

But it will never be the Yonge Street of my teenage years, when it was a "cruising" street, where people standing around whispered "weed" to you as you walked by...the arcades, the poster shops, the record shops, the head shops, the cheap movie houses playing bad kung-fu movies, muscle cars cruising up and down the Strip on Saturday night....and that totally impressive and out of context new thing....the Eaton Centre.

I had hopes that Yonge Street would still manage to be Yonge Street...where the players may change, but the game remains the same. But I can see that is not to be. So I don't really care what happens any more. Maybe what's going on with 5ive is the way to go....restore or facade the original buildings into condo projects.

 

[adma]

And certainly not by what may remain of cheap imitations of Yonge Street's authentic cheap look of the 70's.

Though the gold-lame Y2K revamp of the Zanzibar facade actually almost transcends whatever the 70s may have wrought...

 

[thecharioteer]

Streets, like people evolve, and the Yonge Street of the 60's-70's has changed because the ownership and retail has changed. Almost all of Yonge's signage (going back to its beginning) was advertising the goods the shop-owner was selling, be it shoes or shows. What's generic about the Dundas Squares/Times Squares of today is the dominance of third-party signage, (though Times Square really became "Times Square" because of scale, quantity and quality of its third-party signage). Even if one looks at Yonge through "Pop Strip/Venturi" eyes, the "Strip" has that "mini-me" feel because of its lack of originality.

The early "strip", south of Richmond, 1903:

North of Dundas 1950:

The "Glory" days?

 

[freshcutgrass]

What's generic about the Dundas Squares/Times Squares of today is the dominance of third-party signage, (though Times Square really became "Times Square" because of scale, quantity and quality of its third-party signage). Even if one looks at Yonge through "Pop Strip/Venturi" eyes, the "Strip" has that "mini-me" feel because of its lack of originality.

I do agree with that.

Dundas Square was a planned and executed project...down to the city expropriating land for that purpose. And certain elements of it were at least partially influenced by existing situations elsewhere (be it Times Square of something else). So it does deserve at least in part it's "mini-me" criticism.

But the "seediness" of the area in the 70's was not planned. It isn't as if a city committee or BIA watched Midnight Cowboy and decided "yea...let's re-create that on Yonge". The aesthetic look of seediness is not the result of a contrived or cultivated look or design...in fact, probably quite the opposite....a lack of it. So you can't fault Toronto or Yonge for being a "mini-me" on that.

Looking at those old photos, I noticed that the real visual mess there are the 7-tier hydro poles, street lamps and streetcar overhead wires. It really makes a difference when looking at the 70's photos when they are gone.

Which reminds of another peculiar thing about Yonge...those streetlights that were actually attached to the facades of the buildings (square boxes with round lights), rather than on light standards on the street. You can still see some of them on buildings that haven't had any renovation for decades. I don't think any of them actually function any more. I'm not aware of seeing these any where else. Does anybody know the story behind these? Did the city pay the building owner a fee to have them stuck to their building and to power them?

 

[adma]

Which reminds of another peculiar thing about Yonge...those streetlights that were actually attached to the facades of the buildings (square boxes with round lights), rather than on light standards on the street. You can still see some of them on buildings that haven't had any renovation for decades. I don't think any of them actually function any more. I'm not aware of seeing these any where else. Does anybody know the story behind these? Did the city pay the building owner a fee to have them stuck to their building and to power them?

I believe they were a byproduct of subway construction motivating a rare-for-Toronto line-burial situation that went the next stage into lighting-standard elimination as well, for the ultimate clutter-free streetscape. (A few older "porthole" models can still be seen here and there, maybe with their swan song as practically "architectural" elements at Moriyama's Metro Reference; they tended to be replaced by "wedge" models by the 1980s or so.)

Besides maintenance issues, I'm supposing they were rendered obsolete by the BIA-ish re-fashionability of overhead street lighting...

 

[freshcutgrass]

Besides maintenance issues, I'm supposing they were rendered obsolete by the BIA-ish re-fashionability of overhead street lighting...

I was walking up Yonge last night (Dundas to Bloor), so I actually made a point of checking it out. The Dowtown Yonge BIA portion has their new light standards, so no working building facade street lights. The short portion of Yonge just below Bloor that is part of the Bloor Yorkville BIA has their light standards.

The section between Grosvenor and Charles that is not part of a BIA still uses the building facade flood lights, although all the working ones seemed to be modern ones, not the old "porthole" ones.

Given the amount of ambient "light pollution" on Yonge, I wonder if they are really necessary at all. I also noticed they are powered from city electricity that runs under the street, as some of them have exposed conduit unceremoniously running down the building facade to a electrical box near the sidewalk and then running underground to wherever it connects with underground power.

But it was the old obsolete, non-working "porthole" units that I found interesting. They were almost always attached to those buildings on Yonge that had a going concern tenant, but had signs attached to facades that hadn't been touched in what looks like many decades. It had a "Bladerunner" quality to it. And come to think of it, the reason I have some kind of undefined fondness for the whole "mess" of Yonge might be because it all has a Bladerunner quality to it. Not the futuristic mega-scraper part of Bladerunner...but the way it still has forgotten, rotting bits of early 20th century streetscape mingled in with it.

 

[thecharioteer]

And come to think of it, the reason I have some kind of undefined fondness for the whole "mess" of Yonge might be because it all has a Bladerunner quality to it. Not the futuristic mega-scraper part of Bladerunner...but the way it still has forgotten, rotting bits of early 20th century streetscape mingled in with it.

Though part of the Bladerunner aesthetic is rooted on "the pleasure of ruins", (a European tradition deriving from the Romantic movement's contemplation of the past) it's hard to derive satisfaction from much of Yonge's crumbling facades, lost cornices, aluminum "repairs", cheap windows and back-lit signage. And yet, in the same way that the past reveals itself in subtle ways in European cities (as simple as a Roman column embedded in a medieval facade), two hundred years of human habitation on Yonge Street bubbles up in subtle ways, like the palimpsest of the Loew's sign on the back of the Elgin Theatre, the clock tower of the fire station that became the legendary St. Charles Tavern, or even Hockridge's Fine China.

Isn't that what we love about urban life, these elements of surprise and wonder (and what is usually so absent in the suburbs)? We look around the city as courthouses become restaurants, single-family homes become offices, theatres become stores, churches become theatres, office buildings become apartments and warehouses become just about everything. As Joni used to sing "the circle goes round and round", and though Yonge today is not the Yonge of my youth (when my parents would drive us all downtown to see the Christmas lights on Yonge), it still is our Main Street in which the memory of all those previous generations who built this city still lingers.

 

[freshcutgrass]

Chew's Eye World would fit in nicely on Yonge.

 

[freshcutgrass]

two hundred years of human habitation on Yonge Street bubbles up in subtle ways, like the palimpsest of the Loew's sign on the back of the Elgin Theatre, the clock tower of the fire station that became the legendary St. Charles Tavern, or even Hockridge's Fine China.

Yes...I think that's why I'm partially apologetic about some of the elements of Yonge most people find "bad", and need addressing. I see all these little elements as artifacts..they aren't "good" or "bad". But it is these subtle physical things that partly contribute to a "mood" of the area.

And there's just something bitter-sweet about completely gentrifying an area where it is completely devoid of any of these artifacts in the name of "improvement".

 

[thecharioteer]

Yes...I think that's why I'm partially apologetic about some of the elements of Yonge most people find "bad", and need addressing. I see all these little elements as artifacts..they aren't "good" or "bad". But it is these subtle physical things that partly contribute to a "mood" of the area.

And there's just something bitter-sweet about completely gentrifying an area where it is completely devoid of any of these artifacts in the name of "improvement".

While I support the idea of celebrating age and memory (in the same way that old movie stars are given Lifetime Achievement Awards for just surviving), we should beware of a certain architectural relativism inherent with not wanting to judge any of these survivors. As seen in this typical group below, too many of these buildings have been badly treated over the years. A sensitive programme of renovation and restoration needn't sacrifice the "mood" of Yonge.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Amen to that. And your photograph indicates how said renovation might restore the collective statement that block of four storefronts makes, once the competing individual treatments have been toned down.