The Toronto Archives describes the picture below as: "View of high buildings from Royal Bank. April 22, 1929." The caption is wrong; it should be Royal York [Hotel]. The largest building in the right middle distance is of course the Toronto Star building, 1929-1972, and inspiration for The Daily Planet Building of Superman's Canadian creator/artist Joe Shuster. First Canadian Place is there now.

Today, the public relations staff of the Royal York Hotel gave me their kind co-operation and access to get the Now views below. The first three are, respectively, looking northwest, then north, then northeast from the Rooftop Garden. Needless to say the Now/modern view has been blocked by buildings (numbers 95 and 79) on Wellington Street. There was an attempt made to find the small "gap" between numbers 95 and 79 to get a picture across the street to the north, but the Royal York stairwells were in the wrong positions, the horror.

The Rooftop Garden is not a public area.  It is a flat roof covered in stone pebbles; there are beehives and a number of raised beds for herbs for the hotel kitchens. Access is through a machinery room. They do give tours but a search on the internet shows these are very occasional.

Enjoy the view. I would like to thank the Royal York Hotel public relations staff again, especially for pointing out their extensive photo gallery from their archives on the mezzanine level — very worthwhile of your time to visit. If you can't visit, check out their Facebook page; many vintage photos there.