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UrbanToronto is celebrating 20 YEARS throughout October with stories and images looking back over the last two decades. Today we look at Toronto's race for the sky through ever-taller buildings.
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One of the most visible changes to the Toronto landscape in the past twenty years has been the city’s climb to the sky, and UrbanToronto has been the forum and database of record in documenting Toronto’s rise to new heights for the past two decades as it marks 20 years in 2023.
The classic postcard view of the Toronto skyline from Toronto Islands has changed dramatically in those decades and is virtually unrecognizable from 100 years ago. Perhaps nothing so visibly demonstrates the growth of Toronto and the additional 1.5 million living in the Greater Toronto Area since 2003, then that vantage point from across the inner harbour.
A chronological review of height in Toronto shows many ebbs and flows, of boom times and dormant times, of skyscrapers and ‘stumps’, stops and starts and a city with modest beginnings growing outward as well as upward as it became North America’s fourth largest city.
Toronto’s downtown in 1923 was mostly church spires and a few 20-something storey offices buildings clustered around King and Yonge streets, then the central intersection of the city’s financial core. The rise to the sky began with the completion of the 28 floor, 122 metre Royal York Hotel in 1929 and the 34-storey, 145 metre Bank of Commerce (now Commerce Court North) building in 1931. Befitting its exalted skyscraper status, the Bank of Commerce building even had an observation deck amongst the gargoyles on the top floor. Both buildings were at one point the tallest in the British Empire and symbolized a growing and vibrant city.
“Those early buildings showed Toronto wasn’t a small town anymore,” says Edward Skira, President and Co-Publisher of UrbanToronto. “They definitely demonstrated that Toronto was on the rise, that economic power was growing here and the city was becoming important. It was a harbinger of things to come.”
The depression of the 1930s, Second World War in the 1940s and post-war recovery in the 1950s meant the skyline view from the Islands remained fairly stagnant for more than thirty years, with the Royal York and Bank of Commerce buildings dominating the look of Toronto for decades.
Post-war immigration led to tall apartment buildings being built in the 1960s such as clusters in Regent Park, St James Town, on Bathurst Street near Steeles Avenue and the twin Leaside Towers development in Thorncliffe Park. All of them seem to share the characteristic of a tall tower surrounded by a large lawn — lawns that were largely unused by the people who lived there, a style of multi-residential site planning that became known as Tower-in-the-Park.
“Those clusters of apartment buildings were smart in that they created density, but many areas such as Regent Park were poorly planned,” says Skira. “Those towers didn’t hit the street well and while Towers-in-the-Park were the norm, nobody took ownership of those lawns. As the famed urbanist Jane Jacobs would say, they put no eyes on the street. Today those lawns are now being infilled.”
Toronto entered the modern skyscraper era with the completion in 1967 of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s TD Bank Tower at King and Bay. At 56 storeys and 223 metres, it was 78 metres taller than the Bank of Commerce building and stood out on the skyline like the black monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey. “It certainly stood out in terms of architecture and design as it was taller, modern, sleeker and world-class,” recalls Skira. “It was transformational and it definitely changed the feel of the city. It also was the beginning of the PATH Network as its retail was underground and not on the street.”
The 1960s in Toronto were a time of optimism with grand proposals such as Metro Centre on the railway lands, from which only the CN Tower was built, and the planning and building of the Ontario Science Centre and Ontario Place. However, the mood was definitely more somber in Montreal, then the country’s business capital. The rise of the FLQ led to bombings, calls for Quebec to separate and general unrest which culminated in the October Crisis of 1970 with military on the streets. The unrest made corporations look for a safer haven for their businesses and employees and caused an exodus to Toronto. The city was only too happy to accommodate.
The 1970s saw the major banks play oneupmanship at King and Bay with the construction of statement towers such as Commerce Court in 1972, First Canadian Place in 1975 occupied by Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank Plaza in 1976 and in the late 1980s Scotia Plaza and early 1990s the twin tower BCE Place. This created the classic pyramid shape of the skyline as seen from the Islands with Toronto now playing in the major leagues of height amongst North American cities.
However, the bottom fell out of the economy in the early 1990s and height took a pause in Toronto, so aptly symbolized by ‘The Stump’ that marked the Bay Adelaide Centre for so may years. In fact for ten years, between Simcoe Place in 1995 and One King West in 2005, not one building was built in Toronto over 150 metres high.
The last twenty years though have seen an unprecedented rise to the sky in that 70, 80, and 90 storey condominium proposals are now the norm and the phrase ‘supertall’ is becoming commonplace on UrbanToronto. In the early 2000s when UrbanToronto was founded, Downtown south of the rail corridor was a barren collection of parking lots. Today, Southcore is a dense collection of skyscrapers which would make any city proud.
Toronto is unique in that there isn't just one skyline, but many clusters of high-rises, such as in Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke, Mississauga, and even 50-storey towers in Vaughan. At Yonge and Eglinton, builders have applied to build 700 more storeys of residential development than provincial development targets originally called for, which Skira believes the area can accommodate, but it will take much planning and collaboration.
“The City wants more density along subway lines and with the interchange of the new Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown with the Yonge subway, Yonge and Eglinton is not a bad place to increase density,” he says. “But it will take collaboration amongst city planners, with engineers, local school boards, and transit officials working together. Infrastructure, schools, electrical, sewers all need to be planned for. It’s not impossible but you need to plan for it. You can see what’s coming, so make sure that [inftrastructure] is there. I don’t see Toronto declining in any way, but the infrastructure has to keep up.”
While there doesn’t appear to be any slowdown in new residents coming to the city, just where those people will work is in fact changing dramatically. The pandemic has vastly accelerated work-from-home with no reduction in productivity, meaning commercial office towers such as TD Terrace and CIBC Square Phase II may be the last such towers built for many years.
“The unemployment rate is low, workers have choices, and companies are having a hard time getting people to come back into the office,” says Skira. “Office complexes won’t happen again for a while, but we’ve seen that before in the late 1980s to 2000s. There are many proposals out there, however in the short term we won’t see any major office towers built.”
Who knows what that skyline view from Toronto Islands will look like in twenty years’ time? When, not if, will Toronto punch above the 100 storey mark? With a lake to its south and a greenbelt to its north, it’s certain to say vertical growth in Toronto will go on and the rise to the skies will continue unabated.
UrbanToronto will return tomorrow with another story celebrating 20 YEARS. In the meantime, check back often to our front page and Forum to keep an eye on all the current and emerging trends, and you can always leave your comments in the space below.
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Thank you to the companies joining UrbanToronto to celebrate our 20 years in business.
