Students may soon be saying goodbye to 52-year-old building
A sleek, futuristic glass structure emerges out of aged brick. For most Victoria College students, this is an everyday sight on Bloor Street—the ROM. There have been all sorts of reactions to the museum’s new addition: “It’s horrible!”, “It’s wonderful!”, and everything in between. Well, it seems that debates of this nature are soon to be had at Victoria College, as it is a very real possibility that the Northrop Frye Hall will soon be torn down to make room for a modern replacement.
The proposed replacement for Northrop Frye is a five-storey “Integrated Learning Centre” and would potentially be built out of mass-timber due to the environmental appeal of the material. In accordance with the University of Toronto Secondary Plan Review—a document that contains a series of goals and regulations concerned with architecture and land use—such a building would “preserve and enhance the built and open space environment.” However, in order for construction of this replacement structure to commence, a few legal matters must be sorted out.
Firstly, the 27,000 square-foot lot upon which Northrop Frye is situated is officially known as the “Triangle Lands”. Far from being the geometry-lover’s heaven the name suggests they might be, the “Triangle Lands” are an exemption from an 1892 land lease from the University of Toronto to Victoria College. This exemption means that in order for construction of the proposed building to occur, the 1892 lease has to be amended to permit Victoria to build upon the “Triangle Lands”. Accompanying this proposed amendment must be an Official Plan Amendment application as well as a Rezoning application. These logistical obstructions mean that regardless of whether Vic students love or hate the proposed new addition, it likely is not at risk of becoming a reality in the immediate future.
Yet, it would not be so out of character for Northrop Frye Hall to be torn down, considering Toronto’s rich history of dismantling old architecture. For example, in January of 2017, a 110-year-old midtown Bank of Montreal building was demolished. As one of the last remaining examples of a beaux-art style structure, the loss of this building is another chip in Toronto’s architectural charm and character. While many rallied for the building to be made a heritage site, these efforts were not enough to save it from an untimely end. A Victorian mansion on Wellesley Street suffered the same fate as the bank and was knocked down in 2012 to be replaced with a condo. The demolition of these two buildings is far from anomalous, as a 1917 Mimico factory was torn down in September 2016, and perhaps the most devastating loss of all can be found in the 2015 destruction of The Stollerys Building. Complete with stone facades, The Stollerys Building at Yonge and Bloor was one of the city’s most irreplaceable structures—so why was it not one of our most treasured and protected? There are two likely reasons for this conundrum: the difficulty in determining which buildings possess cultural value, and the procedural inefficiency of securing heritage status.
The most glaring obstacle is that it is extremely difficult for buildings to earn the heritage status essential to preservation. Mary MacDonald, the senior manager of Heritage Preservation Services for City Planning, explains that there are roughly 600 properties in line to be assessed for heritage designation. Of that 600, roughly ninety are already subject to planning and development applications. The race against time to protect Toronto’s beloved buildings is made even more difficult by the vague delineations of what constitutes “cultural value”. When there is outcry on behalf of architecture buffs in the face of potential demolition, their argument is generally this: destroying an aesthetically irreplaceable building does a cultural damage so great that it exceeds any profit from rebuilding. While this is a deeply important point, it just doesn’t strike a chord with everyone—especially not those who have profit to gain in the destruction of old buildings.
The frequency with which old, soulful Toronto architecture is torn down has forced me to question a section of the University of Toronto Secondary Plan Review, which states that new developments on campus should “conserve built heritage resources and cultural heritage landscapes.” Yet, is this really what we are doing? Does the destruction of Northrop Frye Hall mean a brilliant new addition to campus, or is it merely participating in a city-wide phenomenon of dismantling architectural gems? In the coming year, students will see which answer Victoria College chooses.
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