2.9K 
Looking every bit as bold and elegant as it did in 1965, Toronto's 'New City Hall' is set to mark the 50th anniversary of its opening on September 13th. The City of Toronto's series of free public events will commemorate the iconic public building's anniversary, with live entertainment—including musical and dance performances—scheduled between 12 PM and 5 PM at Nathan Phillips Square. During the same hours, an exhibit highlighting the building's history will be on display inside City Hall's main rotunda.
The day's festivities will also include a LEGO workshop, where enthusiasts of all ages will work alongside the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre's master builders to create a large-scale replica of City Hall and the surrounding area. In addition, the City's Planning Division—in partnership with Imagine My City—will host a Planners in Public Spaces (PiPS) Virtual Reality tour of Nathan Phillips Sqaure, while two OCAD student-made interactive art pieces will supplement the exhibit in the rotunda, providing a timeline of the city's development since 1965.
The anniversary of New City Hall provides a poignant opportunity to reflect on Toronto's growth and development over the last half-century, particularly considering the socio-cultural and architectural importance of the project in the context of Toronto's history. When a global design competition was launched for the building in 1957, a new city hall represented the city's first foray in metropolitan prominence, with a previously drab and provincial landscape suddenly immersed in the cutting edge of global design. The competition was eventually won by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, who created the design instantly recognizable to Torontonians today.
As Toronto began to grow into the metropolis that it now is, New City Hall was the first iconic building of a new era, with boldly declarative projects by prominent architects quickly following in its wake. The wave of mid-to-late 20th century construction—which included iconic projects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's TD Centre, Edward Durrell Stone's First Canadian Place, and WZMH and Andrews' CN Tower—was in part precipitated by New City Hall, which sought to put Toronto on the architectural and cultural map.
City Hall's 50 years have seen Toronto bloom from a nascent cosmopolitan city of the 1960s into the true global centre it is today. Socially, culturally, and architectural, the seeds of the Toronto we know now were, in some sense, sown at City Hall 50 years ago.
A full schedule of events can be found on the City of Toronto's website here.
