Architecture of Toronto
The architecture of Toronto is an eclectic combination of architectural styles, ranging from 19th century Georgian architecture to 21st century postmodern architecture and beyond.
Initially, the city was on the periphery of the architectural world, embracing styles and ideas developed in Europe and the United States with only limited local variation.
However, a few unique styles of architecture have emerged from Toronto since the late 19th century, such as the bay and gable style house and the Annex style house.
Toronto's older buildings are influenced by the city's history and culture. Most of the city's older buildings adopted designs found in other areas of the British Empire, such as Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, and various revival-styled designs that were popular during the 19th and early 20th century.
In the years following World War II, the city experienced massive growth and adopted a number of modernist and postmodernist architectural styles, including the International Style and the towers in the park concept. With the adoption of the Greenbelt throughout the Greater Toronto Area in 2005, the region has experienced a large condo boom amid the Canadian property bubble with many designs adopting neomodern styles.
Since the end of World War II, many prominent architects have done work in the city, including Toronto native Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Norman Foster, Will Alsop, I. M. Pei, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Reflecting this eclectic combination of architecture, Lawrence Richards, a member of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto, has said "Toronto is a new, brash, rag-tag place—a big mix of periods and styles."
The growth of the city is influenced by the geography of the city, most notably the Toronto ravine system and the Greenbelt, a permanently protected area of green space, farmland, forests, wetlands, and watersheds within the Golden Horseshoe.
The natural geography of the city also provided builders with a variety of resources to build from. The most abundant raw material was the shale layer underlying the city, as well as the abundance of clay, making brick an especially inexpensive and available material, and resulting in many of the city's buildings being built from brick.
Geography
Landscape
Toronto is built on the former lake bed of Lake Iroquois. This large flat expanse presents few natural limits to growth, and throughout its history, Toronto has sprawled outward and today has a ring of suburbs that spans hundreds of square kilometres. In 2005, the provincial government has attempted to place an artificial limit to this growth in the form of a Greenbelt around the city.The Upper Canada government planned the townships that later became the modern city of Toronto out on a grid system of concession lines that separated rural landholdings with concession lines in York Township being spaced about apart. Major avenues were established along each concession line as the city spread outward. These avenues run straight with few diversions for long stretches, and Toronto is notable for the considerable length of its major streets. Most of the avenues go from one side of the city to the other and often continue deep into the neighbouring suburbs. Suburban expansion replaced these rural lots with subdivisions made of crescents and cul-de-sacs. These local road networks were designed to reduce and slow traffic, redirecting vehicles to the avenues. These wide avenues that even run through the central city have also made it easier for Toronto to retain a streetcar system, which was among the few North American cities to do so.
The most important obstacle to construction is Toronto's network of ravines. Historically, city planners filled in many of the ravines, and when this was not possible, planners mostly ignored them, though today, the remaining ones are embraced for their natural beauty. Ravines have helped isolate some central neighbourhoods from the rest of the city, and have contributed to the exclusivity of certain neighbourhoods such as Rosedale.
Building materials
Thanks to its vast hinterland, Toronto designers have had access to a wide array of raw materials for construction. Due to the clay sediments of the former lake bed that Toronto is built upon, and but more prominently the shale layer underlying this area of North America, brick has been an especially cheap and available material for almost the city's entire history. Much of it was provided by the Don Valley Brick Works, Domtar's brick division, Canada Brick and Brampton Brick, whose output can still be found in thousands of structures across the city and throughout the surrounding regions. Throughout the city, most homes from all eras are made of brick or brick and cinder block. Commercial and industrial builders also long embraced brick, with the Distillery District being a prominent example, though today, more efficient materials, such as concrete blocks, are more common for commercial projects. Prominent landmarks have also gone to greater expense and generally eschewed simple brick. Older banks and government buildings used stone, most commonly limestone, and modern attempts to marvel have embraced modern materials such as concrete and aluminum, in addition to extensive use of glass. Even today, the overwhelming bulk of residential buildings constructed in Toronto are clad in brick.Sandstone was also historically a readily available building material, with large deposits quarried from the Credit River valley. More expensive than brick, but more ornate, it was used for many early landmarks such as the Ontario Legislature, Old City Hall, and Victoria College, giving those buildings a characteristic pinkish colour. It is also the main material used in the unique Annex-style house.
Industrial architecture
The city of Toronto originally formed as a result of its good harbour, and the port was the source of the city's prosperity for most of its early history. The oldest parts of the city are thus by the harbour, with newer growth spreading out in all directions possible. Around the harbour grew up a belt of industrial structures, especially just east and west of downtown. These included massive facilities such as Gooderham and Worts whiskey distillery and Massey Ferguson's farm equipment factories. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the railways became Toronto's main connection with the outside world, and further industrial areas grew up around the freight lines, in areas such as Weston and East York.In the 1970s, deindustrialization began to have a dramatic effect on Toronto. By the 1990s, almost all of the older factories by the waterfront were gone. Some of the newer facilities further north still remain, but are constantly disappearing. Many of the more historic industrial buildings have been converted into lofts and offices with some becoming tourist destinations in their own right with stores and restaurants. Most have been demolished, and in their place, dozens of condominium towers have been erected by the lake shore. There are also still large stretches of abandoned industrial land in the Port Lands district and other parts of Toronto awaiting a redevelopment plan.
Residential architecture
Nineteenth century and earlier
Few structures survive from the earliest period of Toronto's history. The oldest residence, and structure still standing, in Toronto is Scadding Cabin. Completed in 1794, Scadding Cabin is presently used as a heritage museum after it was relocated to Exhibition Place next to the Fort Rouillé site. Finished in 1807, John Cox Cottage, on Broadview Avenue, just north of East Chinatown, is the oldest known house in the city still used as a residence.File:Campbell House.jpg|thumb|Campbell House is an example of Georgian architecture popular with Toronto's elite during the early 19th century and the house was later moved to its present site.
Two of Toronto's oldest surviving brick houses are Campbell House and The Grange. Both are brick structures built in the Georgian style during the first half of the 19th century, reflecting the tastes of Toronto's elite in that era. Although the Georgian style had long been out of favour in the United States, it remained popular in Toronto, with residents hesitant to adopt early American architectural styles. In Loyalist-dominated Upper Canada, the style was embraced with fervour in part because of its British connections. Incongruously, it had also fallen out of fashion in Britain by this time, where it was considered outmoded, but in Toronto, it remained popular until the 1850s. When the Colonial revival was embraced in the United States in the 1890s, Georgian architecture also returned to Toronto. Structures continue to be built in the style today. It has been especially popular with the city's elite and many Georgian manors can be found in wealthy neighbourhoods such as Rosedale and the Bridle Path.
The late nineteenth century Torontonians embraced Victorian architecture and all of its diverse revival styles. Victorian-style housing dominates a number of the city's older neighbourhoods, most notably Cabbagetown, Trinity-Bellwoods, Parkdale, Rosedale, and The Annex. These neighbourhoods hold some of the largest collections of Victorian houses in North America. During this period Toronto also developed some unique styles of housing. The bay-and-gable house was a simple and cost effective design that also aped the elegance of Victorian mansions. Built of the abundant red brick, the design was also well suited to the narrow lots of Toronto. Mostly built in lower and middle class areas the style could be used both for town houses, semi-detached, and stand alone buildings. Hundreds of examples still survive in neighbourhoods such as Cabbagetown and Parkdale. A residential architectural style unique to Toronto is the Annex style house. Built by the city's wealthy and mostly found in the neighbourhood they are named after, these houses contain diverse and eclectic elements borrowed from dozens of different styles. These houses are built of a mix of brick and sandstone, turrets, domes, and other ornamentation abound.