Unbuilt Toronto

Unbuilt Toronto explores the failed architectural dreams of Toronto. Delving into unfulfilled & largely forgotten visions for grand public buildings, landmark skyscrapers, roads & highways, transit systems, & sports & recreation venues, the authors outline such ambitious but ultimately unrealised schemes as St. Alban's Cathedral, the "Newark 2011" subway system, & a 1911 city plan that would have resulted in a Paris-by-the-Lake. Readers will lament the loss of some projects (such as the planned construction boom for the Olympics), be thankful for the loss of others ("City Hall was supposed to look like that?!?"), & marvel at the downtown that could have been (with underground roads & walkways in the sky). With an eye on the future as well as the past, the author takes stock of Toronto's status quo in 2008 & offers some bold predictions on the city's architectural future.

Discover the scrapyard statue planned for University Avenue, the flapper-era "CN Tower" that led to a decade of litigation, and an electric light-rail transit network proposed in 1915. Winner of the 2012 Heritage Toronto Award of Merit Quill & Quire cited Unbuilt Toronto as a book filled with "well-researched, often gripping tales of grand plans," while Canadian Architect said that it is "an impressively researched exploration of never-realized architectural and master-planning projects intended for the city." Now Unbuilt Toronto 2 provides an all-new, fascinating return to the "Toronto that might have been." Discover the scrapyard statue planned for University Avenue, the flapper-era "CN Tower" that led to a decade of litigation, and an electric light-rail transit network proposed in 1915. What would Toronto look like today if it had hosted the Olympics in 1996 or 1976? And what was the downtown expressway that Frederick Gardiner really wanted? With over 150 photographs, maps, and illustrations, Unbuilt Toronto 2 tracks the origins and fates of some of the city’s most interesting planning, transit, and architectural "what-ifs."

Discover the scrapyard statue planned for University Avenue, the flapper-era "CN Tower" that led to a decade of litigation, and an electric light-rail transit network proposed in 1915. Winner of the 2012 Heritage Toronto Award of Merit Quill & Quire cited Unbuilt Toronto as a book filled with "well-researched, often gripping tales of grand plans," while Canadian Architect said that it is "an impressively researched exploration of never-realized architectural and master-planning projects intended for the city." Now Unbuilt Toronto 2 provides an all-new, fascinating return to the "Toronto that might have been." Discover the scrapyard statue planned for University Avenue, the flapper-era "CN Tower" that led to a decade of litigation, and an electric light-rail transit network proposed in 1915. What would Toronto look like today if it had hosted the Olympics in 1996 or 1976? And what was the downtown expressway that Frederick Gardiner really wanted? With over 150 photographs, maps, and illustrations, Unbuilt Toronto 2 tracks the origins and fates of some of the city’s most interesting planning, transit, and architectural "what-ifs."

With 150 archival plans, photographs, and illustrations, Mark Osbaldeston explores 200 years of significant but unrealized building, planning, and transit schemes in Hamilton. Learn about the escarpment amphitheatre, the Gage Avenue tunnel, the King’s Forest Zoo, and the downtown planetarium, none of which ever came to fruition.

Renowned architect Eberhard Zeidler tells his story in a two-volume book that explores his early life in Germany and his years in Canada after he moved there in 1951. Architect of Toronto's Eaton Centre and Trump International Hotel and Tower, Zeidler has left his stamp on the urban landscape of Canada, the United States, and the rest of the world.

Celebrating Toronto’s built heritage of row houses, semis, and cottages and the people who lived in them. Despite their value as urban property, Toronto’s workers’ cottages are often characterized as being small, cramped, poorly built, and in need of modernization or even demolition. But for the workers and their families who originally lived in them from the 1820s to the 1920s, these houses were far from modest. Many had been driven off their ancestral farms or had left the crowded conditions of tenements in their home cities abroad. Once in Toronto, many lived in unsanitary conditions in makeshift shantytowns or cramped shared houses in downtown neighbourhoods such as The Ward. To then move to a self-contained cottage or rowhouse was the result of an unimaginably strong hope for the future and a commitment to family life. Through the stories of eight families who lived in these “Modest Hopes,” authors Don Loucks and Leslie Valpy bring an important but forgotten part of the Toronto narrative to life. They illuminate the development of Toronto’s working-class neighbourhoods, such as Leslieville, Corktown, and others, and explain the designs and architectural antecedents of these undervalued heritage properties.

The city of Victoria, British Columbia, is a time capsule of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. This book examines some of the architectural plans that were proposed but rejected and lets the reader decide which projects should have been built.

When Toronto’s New City Hall opened in 1965, it was an iconic modernist symbol for what was still a sedate and conservative city. Its futuristic design by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, composed of two curved towers flanking a clam-shaped council chamber, remains as strange and distinctive today as it did fifty years ago. In Civic Symbol, Christopher Armstrong chronicles the complex and controversial development of this urban landmark from the initial international competition to the many debates that surrounded its construction and furnishing. Armstrong catalogs the many twists and turns along the path from idea to reality for the extraordinary building that Frank Lloyd Wright claimed future generations would say “marks the spot where Toronto fell.” Lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, plans, and drawings, Civic Symbol is the essential history of this iconic Canadian building.