1. Province Instigates Bandit Demolition at Dominion Foundry in Toronto Catherine Nasmith
Prince Charles visiting the Dominion Foundry before the Pan Am games
The provincial demolition wagons are circling around 153-185 Eastern Avenue, the Former Dominion Foundry, a complex of four buildings that are part of the West Don Lands in Toronto. On January 14, the first day of the latest provincial lockdown, which shut down non-essential construction sites, a demolition crew arrived. HUH?
I Demolition crews arriving, January 14, 2021
From a statement by Councillor Kristyn Wong Tam, “The four buildings on the Foundry site were constructed between 1917 and 1929, were owned by the Canadian Northern Railway (later, the Canadian National Railways) and were used by the Dominion Wheel and Foundries Company to produce railway equipment. As noted when the properties were added to the City’s heritage register in 2004, the four buildings were deemed “historically and architecturally significant as a good example of an industrial enclave in the area adjoining the lower Don River.”
The site has been the subject of a Ministerial Zoning Order which strips the City of Toronto of any planning or demolition control in favour of the province’s plans to redevelop. There doesn’t appear to be any known plan for switching from the expected re-purposing of the buildings on the site. It is hard not to suspect a backroom deal that is conditional on clearing the site of potential planning obstacles.
Community leaders are rallying, calling for a halt, hoping widespread public opposition will create a pause for second thought.
Friends of the Foundry have been formed and have an online petition that has gathered over 5000 signatures in a couple of days, and have launched an information page with constant updates.
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam has issued a statement.
Toronto media are responding with articles in the Globe and Mail, Blog TO and CBC .
Greg Lintern, Toronto's Chief Planner has written to the province, here's the letter
Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO) Toronto President Matt Zambri and ACO provincial president Kae Elgie have sent a letter to the Minister of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries to intervene to stop the demolition.
Much of the anger stems from the complete change in direction by the province on a well- established plan developed by Waterfront Toronto, a tri-level government body that has had representation from the province since it began. The buildings were to be re-purposed as a community hub.
The other factor seems to be the failure of the province to follow its own established process on provincially owned heritage property, set out in the Standards and Guidelines for Conservation of Provincial Heritage Properties. Prior to undertaking a sale or work on a provincially owned heritage property government bodies are required to develop a Strategic Conservation Plan and to produce a Heritage Impact Assessment.
It may take an FOI request to determine whether either of those documents have been commissioned or produced. The City of Toronto has written to ask for them. To not do them would contravene Part III.1 of the Ontario Heritage Act. Administration of these lands is under the auspices of the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, Realty Division, formerly Infrastructure Ontario.
When I spoke to officials in the province’s Heritage Division I was advised that the property had been evaluated in 2006, which identified provincial significance under regulation 9:06, but not 10:06, and that report had been grandfathered at the adoption of Standards and Guidelines. In plain language that means that the building has local significance but not province-wide significance.
Ministerial Zoning Order notwithstanding, the province cannot ignore its obligations under Part III.1 of the Ontario Heritage Act, Standards and Guidelines for Provincial Heritage Properties.
We’ll see if all the activity over the weekend slows things at all, but in the meantime you are invited to sign the Petition, and share it as widely as you can.
2. Save Canadian Design Heritage - Donate to Dominion Modern (DOMO). John Martins
Since 2004 Dominion Modern has been researching and assembling the most comprehensive collection of Canadian architecture and design in Canada.
Our mission is to collect, catalogue, preserve, and promote public awareness and understanding of our architectural and design heritage. A registered non-profit organisation Dominion Modern operates with the generous support of individual and corporate donations.
Donations receive a charitable tax receipt.
Dominion Modern has recently moved into our curatorial centre. Here we will house and store our collections of 50K objects. The new space will allow us to catalogue and digitize the collections and allow us to have all our objects and research library in one place for the first time. Our new space will also be a launch pad for pop-up design exhibits in the community.
DOMO Collections and Areas of Research
Industrial Design
Graphic Design
Package Design
Ephemera
Photography
Fashion
Architecture
Furniture Design
Industrial History
Domestic History
Periodicals Collection
A permanent design hub for Dominion Modern. To catalogue our collections, promote Canadian design through programming of exhibitions, publications and events. Education through tours, internships and volunteer opportunities
Cataloguing Canada
The Dominion Modern Collection is a cultural asset, housing the most comprehensive primary sources for any historical research into Canada’s modernist period. Dominion Modern’s archive is a link to the living testament of Canadian modernism—a source fast disappearing.
An important component of the collection is the oral history comprising over 250 interviews on tape and video with leading contributors to the modern movement in Canada. This has been a work in progress. It is essential these interviews be transcribed and digitized. Researchers can then access paper or digital format.
The other objective is to methodically catalogue and index Dominion Modern’s archive of over 50K artefacts and documents—all original sources—relating to the Canadian modernist movement.
Documents will be scanned. Three-dimensional objects will be photographed. The archive will constitute, in effect, a digital and physical museum of modernism in Canada.
The Presence of Dominion Modern
In 2004 we opened our first gallery space at 709 Bay Street (Toronto), in a building designed by architect Peter Dickinson. In 2006-2011 we began an association with the George Brown, School of Design (Toronto). We worked with students to document built heritage from the mid-20th century. Workspace and student volunteers were provided in exchange for mentoring and curatorial services. The Dominion Modern Gallery @ the School of Design became our principal gallery space.
Over the years Dominion Modern has staged eight major exhibitions and many smaller ones. Always free to the public. The exhibits educate and expose the viewer to the enormous talent that flourished in the country in the twentieth century.
Dominion Modern proposes to publish a series on Canadian architects and designers, in a compact, glossy, well designed, well researched and affordable format.
Our past book titles include,
Mean City: From Architecture to Design (2004 and 2007)
Noxon: Architect and Industrial Designer (2008)
Peter Dickinson Architect (2010)
Metro: Design in Motion (2011 and 2013)
Le Parc olympique (2016)
Nienkamper (2018)
Founder John Martins established Dominion Modern to preserve and protect our design heritage.
We ask for your help to save and protect our design heritage for future generations. Help us by donating generously to a most noble project. Please donate to Dominion Modern.
Editor's Note: Over the holidays I was reading John Martins-Manteiga's book on Dickinson, reached out to thank him for his excellent research and asked him to update BHN on what he has been doing lately. He's well and doing great work in Montreal....work worth supporting if you are so inclined. He is now using the name John Martins.
3. A Christmas present to College Street in Toronto Catherine Nasmith
That's King William of Orange, with a newly restored arm in the crest at the top of the building
A little good news story from the very small architectural practice of Catherine Nasmith Architect, also editor of Built Heritage News. I don't tend to use BHN for publicity, so please forgive this just once.
College Street Elevation, 394 Euclid Avenue
The project is a small condominium of about twenty units, with retail along College Street. It is designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act, and was redeveloped in the late nineties by Jackson Goad Architects as the "Movie House" condominium. I was brought in to consult on replacing the windows which were starting to experience leaks, and seal failures because the corporation wanted to be sure they were acting appropriately with regard to the building's heritage, and maybe there would be some kind of financial support to help them. Unfortunately, the building falls between the City of Toronto funding programs, is neither commercial enough for one or residential enough for the other.
It was originally designed by George M. Miller, architect of Victoria College and the Gladstone Hotel, and was built as a Loyal Orange Hall in 1913.
We replaced the windows with sash that can be taken inside for repair and cleaning, we painted the cornice, and with a modest budget for repairing the cast stone and cleaning the masonry made a lot of progress. I enjoyed working with both the construction crew and the owners, especially being up on the scaffolding. I wish there were more chances to work on the small gems like this one around Toronto.
4. Change.org Petition "Save The Foundry - Respect Local Planning Save the Foundry
Save The Foundry - Respect Local Planning
There are nearly 5000 signatures on this petition in two days. If you agree please sign and post on your social media! Thanks
Toronto residents demand province call off plans to demolish heritage buildings in West Don Lands
Province did not consult community or notify councillor and MPP of impending demolition, they say
The Dominion Wheel and Foundries Company site, 153 -185 Eastern Ave., is a provincially owned property now subject to a Ontario ministerial zoning order issued in October. The order, one of three for the West Don Lands, paves the way for housing construction and allows the province to bypass planning processes, including public consultations. (Submitted by Evan Madill)
Some Toronto residents are demanding that the Ontario government scrap plans to demolish heritage buildings on the West Don Lands downtown.
The Dominion Wheel and Foundries Company site, at 153 to 185 Eastern Ave., is a provincially owned property now subject to a Ontario ministerial zoning order issued in October. The order, one of three for the West Don Lands, paves the way for housing construction and allows the province to bypass planning processes, including public consultations.
The four buildings on the site were constructed between 1917 and 1929 and were added to the city of Toronto's heritage register in 2004.
Friends of the Foundry, a newly formed group that advocates for local planning, is urging the government to work with the community to find an alternative to demolition and preserve the site.
Heavy equipment and a demolition crew appeared at the site on Thursday. Crew members told residents they have been told to clear the site by March.
The province did not consult the community, did not notify the local city councillor or MPP and is not considering any community feedback, the group says.
"Today, the Province has once again used secrecy and the cover of a provincial emergency to begin demolition of the Foundry. It has done this without any consultation, disclosure of a disposition plan, consideration of adaptive reuse or even a courtesy call to the City and community leaders," the group said in a news release on Friday.
6. BlogTO: Demolition on Dominion Foundry Site, Toronto Tanya Mok
People furious over Ontario's plans to demolish four Toronto heritage buildings
from Google Earth, four buildings which were planned for re-use by Waterfront Toronto now subject to demolition
News that the Province plans on razing four heritage buildings in Corktown, without permission from community members or the City, has sent waves of shock through the neighbourhood.
Toronto residents had no idea that the abandoned buildings on the historic Foundry site — which sit on Blocks 17 and 26 of the West Don Lands — would soon meet the wrecking ball.
Four heritage buildings in the West Don Lands' Foundry site have been slated for demolition. Photo by blogTO.
But when demolition crews were spotted driving in and out of the Provincially-owned property this week, neighbours were horrified to learn that the Foundry buildings, which some had hoped to transform into a music hub, could be gone by March.
7. Globe and Mail: The Dominion Foundry Demolitions Alex Bozikovic
Doug Ford steps back into the quagmire of Toronto city planning – this time with bulldozers
The former Dominion Wheel & Foundries Ltd. buildings on Eastern Avenue in Toronto on Jan. 15, 2021.
ALEX BOZIKOVIC/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Doug Ford is sending in the wreckers.
A demolition crew showed up this week at an old industrial complex on Eastern Avenue, just east of Toronto’s downtown core. Local residents’ associations and the city councillor, Kristyn Wong-Tam, were outraged.
They’re mostly right to be. While the situation is more complicated than it seems, this apparent demolition is wrong and unnecessary. Mr. Ford is bringing a sledgehammer to do a subtle job. And that’s bad news for an important cause: the intensification of our cities.
The site in question is a provincially owned lot that contains four industrial buildings, the onetime home of Dominion Wheel and Foundries. A master plan for this West Don Lands area had preserved it for unspecified uses, but the Ford government imposed a ministerial zoning order last fall to override any city planning on the site. Now they plan to redevelop it with three high-rise housing towers.
That move was widely decried as anti-democratic. But it had seemed to me a rare case of the Ford government getting something right – until now.
“This is home to the largest concentration of heritage buildings in the neighbourhood,” Ms. Wong-Tam says. She is calling for the demolition work to stop. “The province is showing absolute disregard of its own heritage policies.”
The West Don Lands plan has partly squandered a huge opportunity for the core to grow.
ALEX BOZIKOVIC/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
It’s important to separate the what and the how. The province’s goal of putting some tall buildings on this site is reasonable. The city badly needs to add more housing, particularly downtown. And in the five years since the West Don Lands first opened, it’s become clear that the area is too thinly populated. It’s more than half done, yet often feels like a ghost town.
Its carefully planned mid-rise buildings and wide streets don’t deliver much population density – about 6,000 homes on 80 acres. To put it into the context of Europe (as many in the planning world like to do), this is equivalent to a fragment of central Paris. But it’s an isolated fragment, lined on three sides by rail tracks, houses and the Don River. It doesn’t work as intended.
Meanwhile, in 2019, Toronto delivered its own plan, TOCore, reimagining downtown as a dramatically denser place. In this respect, the West Don Lands plan has partly squandered a huge opportunity for the core to grow.
If this Conservative government really wants to deliver more housing, as it claims, it should take aim at the regressive policies that stop growth in Toronto’s comfortable neighbourhoods. The fast-growing city must welcome a lot more people, and local policy makes that much too hard. This government, with its near-total indifference to Toronto voters, could save Toronto from itself.
Editor's Note: If you can get past the paywall, Catherine Nasmith is quoted at the end of the article.
"The province’s scorched-earth approach “is a very old fashioned way of doing things,” says architect and preservationist Catherine Nasmith. “We haven’t done that since the sixties. Now, we try to save what we can – and that takes many different forms.”
8. Metropolis: Dec 7 2020 How Recycling Existing Buildings Could Solve the Urban Housing Crisis Chaseedaw Giles
How Recycling Existing Buildings Could Solve the Urban Housing Crisis
Community Rehab of a former log cabin for housing
Does the cure for housing insecurity lie in more aggressive reuse of overlooked structures? A growing number of architects and urban activists say 'Yes.'
Participants in nonprofit Black Women Build-Baltimore (BWBB) handle every step of renovations from reframing to installing plumbing. Once slated for demolition, the houses were initially valued at $6,000 to $11,000. After renovations, they’ve been appraised for $80,000.Courtesy Schaun Champion
Newly built houses, with their sizable carbon footprints, don’t just contribute to climate change. For many Americans they’re also too expensive—a bitter irony in cities rife with vacant buildings and record evictions.
Given the urgency of both issues, projects that retrofit livable housing into existing low-carbon shells (the initial embodied carbon was spent long ago) might be worth a closer look. We searched for them and came across a handful that promise a cure for housing insecurity and excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
Activist builder Shelley Halstead and architects Peter Birkholz and Katie Swenson stand out as champions of adaptive reuse and renovations as tools for providing more and better housing. Their plans range from makeovers of aging public housing to the careful recycling of one boarded-up single-family property at a time in historically undervalued and devastated neighborhoods.
“Homeownership is how you enter the middle class,” says Halstead. “It’s how you gain wealth and pass on wealth.” That potential for socioeconomic justice is why her efforts are gaining national attention. Her nonprofit Black Women Build-Baltimore (BWBB) trains Black women in carpentry, wiring, and plumbing by directly involving them in the restoration of derelict row houses. It has also occasionally helped prospective homeowners apply for financing.
Courtesy Schaun Champion
Halstead brings unique insight and skills to this effort because she has a law degree from the University of Washington in Seattle and she is a member of Carpenters, Local 131. When she relocated to Baltimore in 2015 and saw its vast stretches of blighted housing, she secured a meeting with now-former housing commissioner Michael Braverman and persuaded him not to demolish one condemned block in West Baltimore’s Upton/Druid Heights area, where the vacancy rate is double the city’s average. She then purchased a section of abandoned row houses. It turned out the cost of stabilizing them for rehab was about the same as the city’s price tag for their demolition—roughly $30,000.
Since then, she has handled virtually everything from pulling permits to physical construction, and her clients work side by side with her. Together they lay bathroom floor tile, install radiant heating, and add energy-efficient features such as skylights in halls and between closets to bring daylighting deep into a space and reduce reliance on artificial illumination.
This highly personal design-build model creates a sustainable relationship to homeownership, a strategy that reimagines the outcomes of urban gentrification and the roles of designers and developers in it.
9. youTube: Examining the Roof Tile at the Duomo in Florence
Editor's Note: I couldn't resist including this one, it is an astounding video that really gives a sense of the achievement in building this in the first place! I found it looking for a CBC radio report this morning which said that the examiners had found footprints of animals and birds on the roof tiles from while the tiles were hardening in the sun on the ground prior to installation.
I Demolition crews arriving, January 14, 2021
The site has been the subject of a Ministerial Zoning Order which strips the City of Toronto of any planning or demolition control in favour of the province’s plans to redevelop. There doesn’t appear to be any known plan for switching from the expected re-purposing of the buildings on the site. It is hard not to suspect a backroom deal that is conditional on clearing the site of potential planning obstacles.
College Street Elevation, 394 Euclid Avenue
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