In today’s class, we took a look at how the Toronto city skyline has changed over time. At the beginning of the 20th century churches were the most recognizable structures of the Toronto skyline and in 1920’s City Hall could be noticed along the skyline. The Temple Building was competed in 1896 and became the city’s first “skyscraper” at 12 stories tall (this building was later demolished in 1970). The Trader’s Bank Building which was completed in 1906 on Younge Street remains one of Canada’s few surviving skyscrapers of the early 20th Century and is now known as The Montreal Trust Building. By the end of the 1920s,Toronto’s population grew to 800,000 and saw the construction of many landmarks that still stand today including Casa Loma, Union Station and the Royal York Hotel which opened on June 11, 1929, and for many years was the tallest building along Toronto’s skyline. The Bank of Commerce Building and the Canada Life Building were also both completed in 1931. The Canada Life building is perhaps best known for its weather beacon, whose colour codes tells us the weather forecasts at a glance; green lights mean clear weather ahead, red means cloudy, flashing red means rain, flashing white snow is forecast. When the white lights along the support tower are running up = warmer, lights running down = cooler and steady = no change in temperature. The beacon was the first of its kind to appear in Canada and when completed on August 9, 1951, made the structure the third-highest in Toronto, after the Canadian Bank of Commerce Building and the Royal York Hotel.
The Toronto city skyline grew most dramatically during the construction boom in the 1960s. The Toronto Dominion Centre which was completed in 1967 became Toronto’s first true skyscraper with 56 floors. Commerce Court West became the tallest building in 1972 with 87 floors. The CN tower became the world’s tallest free-standing structure when it was completed in 1976 and held that claim for more than 30 years until 2007 when it was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa. It is now the ninth tallest free-standing structure in the world and remains the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere.
The CN Tower has provided a visual reference of the Toronto city Skyline since 1976. The slender concrete column is an international icon that has made Toronto an instantly recognizable skyline. Its serves as an AM, FM, UHF, and cell transmission tower. The built-in observation deck, glass floor and glass rooftop attract more than 1.5 million tourists a year up the exterior elevators. In 1995, the CN Tower was declared one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It also belongs to the World Federation of Great Towers.
For this project, students sketched their CN towers first with pencils as a long vertical line, and then were careful to ensure that all the other buildings added to the city skyline were lower than the CN Tower. Students could be as creative as they liked designing their own buildings along the cityscape. Some students showed the Royal York Hotel still being one of the taller buildings along the skyline. Using orange and magenta watercolours for a background wash, students then pulled out clouds using paper towels. Then, using acrylic paint – a “base coat” of grey paint and then painting different shades of blue to create the illusion of some buildings being in front or behind other structures. Well done everyone! Take a look at some of these Toronto City Skylines….
