Architecture of Toronto

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.

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.

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.

These avenues run straight with few diversions for long stretches, and Toronto is notable for the considerable length of its major streets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Victorian-style housing dominates a number of the city's older neighbourhoods, most notably Cabbagetown, Trinity-Bellwoods, Parkdale, Rosedale, and The Annex.

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.

The earliest suburbs in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke mostly consisted of small single family homes often bungalows.

These patterns changed dramatically beginning in the 1970s and gentrification began transforming once poor neighbourhoods, such as Cabbagetown, into some of the city's most popular and expensive real estate.

Outside of the core, even new neighbourhoods experienced significant high-rise apartment building construction, as builders embraced the "towers in the park" design, invented by Le Corbusier.

They are typically simple, brick-clad high-rise buildings with rectangular footprints and little ornamentation other than repeating series of balconies for each apartment.

An initial condo boom started in 1986, but the market collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s recession, and many investors were badly mauled.

[7] This development has led to some observers, such as Natalie Alcoba of the National Post, calling the Manhattanization of Toronto in reference to the densely built-up island borough of New York City.

Scotia Plaza, headquarters of Scotiabank, is the second-tallest building in Canada and is the newest of the office towers at that intersection, having been completed in 1988.

[13] The Main Street is the concept of small avenues and store frontages on busy roads, which maintain the vitality of communities and the continuity of the streetscape.

Designed by Eberhard Zeidler, the Toronto Eaton Centre represented one of North America's first downtown shopping malls.

Plans originally called for the demolition of Old City Hall and the Church of the Holy Trinity, but these were eventually dropped after a public outcry.

The University of Toronto (U of T) has embraced dramatic design and monumentalism, and its prominent location at the centre of the city has given its structures a wide impact.

In recent decades, the university has built examples of modernism, such as McLennan Physical Laboratories; brutalism, such as Robarts Library; and postmodernism, such as the graduate house by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne.

Toronto Metropolitan was long mostly hidden within the downtown streetscape, with the Brutalist library, podium, and Jorgensen Hall complex being one half block east of Yonge Street, but since the 1990s, an unprecedented building project has greatly expanded the campus and made it much more visible.

It consists of a black-and-white speckled box suspended four storeys off the ground and supported by a series of multi-coloured pillars at different angles.

The Hockey Hall of Fame is housed in a Beaux-Arts building designed by Frank Darling that was formerly a branch of the Bank of Montreal.

In 2007, Daniel Libeskind's expansion arrived, giving the museum a series of enormous "crystals" that rise dramatically five storeys from the street surface.

The coming of modernism caused churches of all denominations to move away from the Gothic, and embrace modernist architecture with a wide array of designs.

Designed by Canadian architects Arthur Erickson and Mathers and Haldenby, the 2630-seat Roy Thomson Hall opened in 1982 as the primary home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

In June 2006, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts opened as the new home of the Canadian Opera Company and The National Ballet of Canada.

The city later took over the castle when Pellatt could no longer afford to keep it due to being unable to pay the increased property taxes and was forced to leave in 1923.