Exhibition Place
Exhibition Place is a publicly owned mixed-use district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located by the shoreline of Lake Ontario, just west of downtown. The site includes exhibit, trade, and banquet centres, theatre and music buildings, monuments, parkland, sports facilities, and a number of civic, provincial, and national historic sites. The district's facilities are used year-round for exhibitions, trade shows, public and private functions, and sporting events.
From mid-August through Labour Day each year, the Canadian National Exhibition, from which the name Exhibition Place is derived, is held on the grounds. During the CNE, Exhibition Place encompasses, expanding to include nearby parks and parking lots. The CNE uses the buildings for exhibits on agriculture, food, arts and crafts, government and trade displays. For entertainment, the CNE provides a midway of rides and games, music concerts at the Bandshell, featured shows at the Coliseum, and the Canadian International Air Show held over Lake Ontario just south of Exhibition Place. The fair is one of the largest and most successful of its kind in North America and an important part of the culture of Toronto. In the fall, the Coliseum hosts the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.
The buildings on the site date from the 1700s to recent years. Five buildings on the site, were designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1988. The grounds have seen a mix of protection for heritage buildings along with new development. The site was originally set aside for military purposes and gradually given over to exhibition purposes. One military building remains.
The site
Exhibition Place is a rectangular site located length-wise along the north shoreline of Lake Ontario to the west of downtown Toronto. The site is mostly flat ground sloping down gently to the shoreline. It was originally forested land, and was cleared for military use. Sections east and south of the Stanley Barracks building were filled in the early part of the 20th century. Today, the district is mostly paved, with an area of parkland remaining in its western section. There is a large open paved area in the southern central section, which is used for parking and the temporary amusements of the Canadian National Exhibition. The site has a variety of historic buildings, open spaces and monuments. The eastern entrance to Exhibition Place is marked by the large ceremonial Princes' Gates, named for Edward, Prince of Wales, and his brother, Prince George, who visited in 1927. The roads are all named after Canadian provinces and territories except for Princes' Boulevard, which is the main street east to west. Several of the roads are used for the annual Grand Prix of Toronto car race. South of the grounds is Ontario Place, a theme park built in 1971 on landfill in Lake Ontario, and operated by the government of Ontario.The site also has a long history of sports facilities on the site, starting with an equestrian track and grandstand. The grandstand eventually was converted for use by music concerts, major league baseball and football teams. The newest sports facility to be built is the soccer-specific stadium, BMO Field. There is also an arena, the Coliseum, home to professional ice hockey. The site was used for several sports venues of the 2015 Pan American Games.
The site is administered by the Board of Governors of Exhibition Place, appointed by the City of Toronto. As of 2014, the organization had 133 full-time employees, up to 700 during major events, contributed annually to the City of Toronto, and attracted 5.3 million visitors annually to the site. The grounds are in area.
History of the grounds
The small fort Fort Rouillé was built by French fur traders in 1750-1751 as a trading post on the site of today's grounds. The area was an important portage route for Native Americans, and the French wanted to capture their trade before they reached British posts to the south. It was burned by its garrison in 1759 after other French posts fell to the British on Lake Ontario.When the Town of York, the predecessor of Toronto, was inaugurated in the 1790s, the land to the east and west of the garrison was reserved for military purposes. This includes all of today's Exhibition Place. Years later, the British military decided to replace Fort York with New Fort York, to be located to the west of the existing fort. To finance this, the military sold the eastern half of the reserve. In 1840-1841, they constructed a series of six limestone buildings and several smaller ones. The fort was surrounded by a wood fence as elaborate defensive works were never built. The fort was turned over to the Canadian military in 1870, which named it Stanley Barracks in 1893.
The Provincial Agricultural Association and the Board of Agriculture for Canada West inaugurated the Provincial Agricultural Fair of Canada West in 1846, to be held annually in different localities. For the 1858 fair, to be held in Toronto, a permanent "Palace of Industry" exhibition building, based on London's Crystal Palace, was built at King and Shaw Streets in what is now Liberty Village. The site held four more fairs until the 1870s when the City of Toronto government decided the exhibition had outgrown the site. The City signed a lease with the Government of Canada for a section of the western end of the reserve in April 1878. The Palace of Industry was moved to a site on the reserve near today's Horticulture Building, reconstructed and expanded. The City sold the King and Shaw site to the Massey Manufacturing Company.
The 1878 Provincial Agricultural Fair was held on the grounds. When Ottawa was chosen to host the 1879 fair, Toronto decided to hold its own fair. First called the Toronto Industrial Exhibition, it was held in the Crystal Palace and temporary buildings. At first, the eastern part of the site was still reserved for military purposes, the exhibition held on the western part of the reserve, where many of the oldest exhibit buildings are located. As time went by, more and more of the reserve was taken over for exhibition purposes, including a horse track and grandstand, and exhibit buildings.
Development of permanent buildings
In 1902, after the Government of Canada announced it would sponsor the exhibition at the site in 1903, the Toronto City Council decided to rebuild the exhibition site. In 1903, the Government of Canada reached an agreement to transfer the remaining military reserve to the City of Toronto. Under the agreement, military uses were permitted to continue until such time that replacement facilities were built. Included in this was Old Fort York, which the City committed to preserve. The building campaign saw the building of fifteen permanent buildings designed by architect G. W. Gouinlock from 1903 until 1912, including the surviving Press Building, Horticulture Building, Government Building, Music Building and Fire Hall / Police Station. The new buildings were elaborately designed and set in an attractively landscaped site. The 1903 exhibition was the first known as the Canadian National Exhibition. The five remaining buildings were declared a historic site in 1988.Several of the older buildings were lost to fire during this time, including the first Grandstand and the Crystal Palace in 1906. In 1910, the Dufferin Gates was replaced with a more elaborate arch and out-buildings on each side.
During World War I, the Government Building was used as a barracks for soldiers, and a tent camp was set up on the site of the current Ontario Government Building. The Dufferin Gates was guarded by soldiers. The Stanley Barracks was also used as a prisoners-of-war and "enemy aliens" internment camp. The internment camp served as an intake centre; those interned at the Barracks stayed there temporarily before being moved to other camps.
When the CNE became the world's largest annual fair in 1920, a 50-year plan was launched following the urban design and architectural precedents of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Chapman and Oxley prepared the 1920 plan, which emphasized Beaux-Arts architecture and City Beautiful urban design. The Empire Court was to be a monumental central space with a triumphal arch and gates and monumental exhibition buildings with courtyards.
File:Coliseum exterior photo ca 1922.jpg|thumb|left|The Coliseum was opened in 1921 to host the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.
During the 1920s, the exhibition grounds were expanded to the west and to the east, as well as to the south, where reclaimed land was used to build Lake Shore Boulevard, connecting downtown with Toronto's growing western suburbs. The Coliseum, to host the new Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, was opened in 1921, followed by the Government of Ontario Building in 1926, the Princes' Gates in 1927, and the Electrical and Engineering Building in 1928. By the 1930s, the Beaux-Arts style faded in popularity. The start of the trend for a new style of architecture arguably became evident in the construction of the Automotive Building in 1929, the first building that moved away from the Beaux-Art architecture envisioned by the 1920 plan, mixing clean modern lines with classical ornamentation. In 1931, the Horse Palace was built, replacing temporary stables used for the Winter Fair. The Horse Palace used Art Deco ornamentation. In 1936, the Art Deco Bandshell was constructed for open-air music concerts.
During the Second World War, the exhibition grounds became Toronto's main military training grounds. The CNE, and virtually all other non-military uses of the lands ceased. The CNE was not held between 1942 and 1946, when the land and its facilities were turned over to the Department of National Defence as a training ground. The Graphic Arts Building housed Red Cross facilities, the Coliseum became the RCAF Manning Depot, the Horse Palace was used for barracks and the Automotive Building became the shore facility HMCS York for the Royal Canadian Navy. After World War II, the buildings were used as a demobilization centre. The CNE would resume again in 1947, as the Canadian military returned the grounds back to its civilian administrators.