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A Curse On Jane Pitfield

By Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

2006_5_10inn.jpegYesterday we wrote about the destruction of the Inn on the Park, a Modernist landmark that will probably be missed in 20 or 30 years when architectural historians are looking for good examples of Modernism in this city and notice that everything has been torn down. The Star’s Christopher Hume was upset about how council dragged its feet on issuing the permit that would’ve saved the building.
There’s general discontent on the Urban Toronto forum. But nothing matches the invective hurled at Jane Pitfield by Shawn Micallef on the Spacing Wire.

If voting booths were time machines an X beside the name of Jane “keep on keepin’ up” Pitfield would be a vote for an Art Eggleton-style dark age all over again. I can only vote for somebody who genuinely loves this city. Tearing down Toronto’s modern gems is like bombing Cabbagetown or Palmerston Avenue, and should be rewarded by banishment to whichever stretch of the city limits are ugliest.

Comments

  • WK

    Well, whether you agree with demolishing the Inn on the Park (and I haven’t seen many opponents who would have put money where that mouth is), I think Pitfield has more explaining to do on the quote by Christopher Hume in yesterday’s Toronto Star.
    She seems to invite the criticism one should not want to move up if even one’s own ward is to big. Peter’s principle, anybody?
    “Demolition permits should not be given by the city until the designation process has been completed,” says Pitfield, a member of the Toronto Preservation Board, somewhat after the fact. “But it’s difficult to keep up with everything.”
    (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
    pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=
    971358637177&c=Article&cid=1147125011996)
    This sounds like Piffield opening herself up to the criticism she’s too busy campaigning to keep up with the work she’s being paid for – by those taxpayers she’s professing to represent.

  • WK

    sorry, the inclusion of that URL did something funny to the layout of my post (at least on my screen)…

  • Michael

    Isn’t a bit of a stretch to say that all examples of modernism in Toronto are being torn down? I like the old Four Seasons, and I really like the old Bata office but while those buildings are great examples of modernism, they interact poorly with the city. They have more in common with the set back towers and parking lot islands in the area. They are very suburban. Go downtown and you’ll find plenty of modernism that works with the city. Brutalism too.

  • http://www.boyreporter.ca Boy Reporter

    Excuse my rhetorical exaggeration Michael. But these buildings are important in that large parts of the city didn’t get opened up and used in any significant way until after WWII. The period where modernist architecture held sway in Toronto. In 2050 many of these buildings will be approaching their centenary and one wonders how many of them in the burbs will still be around.
    That being said, the best example of modernism in downtown Toronto…. City Hall. I love it more and more every time I go in there.

  • hey

    The only good modernist buildings are TD. City Hall is a horrible, horrible, horrible building. It looks ok, but it is an atrocious building. So much modernist work was anti-functional, ironically for a movement that had “form follows function” as a major slogan.
    Do we have to preserve some of the towers in parks, simply because they are examples of modernist architecture? They’re evil buildings that did horrendous damage to the community and are dangerous to their residents and neighbours. There are the South Florida style concrete apartments in The Annex and elsewhere that are interesting but are horrendous for our climate (as evidenced by the severe spalling).
    Further, modernism is fake architecture, forced on the city and the world by the same theorists that created the impetus for the destruction of so much victorian and other vernacular forms. There are very few private clients for modernism, especially in terms of residential architecture. Socialist elitists created modernism and are now trying to preserve it, but it is just as false as all of their other projects.
    An architecture that had the goal of the destruction of ornament and used shoddy, corner cutting techniques and novel materials that were badly understood has nothing to save. The Don Jail has intricate pieces of whimsy and attempts to enlighten through the built form, as evidenced in recent tours on spacing and elsewhere. What is there to save in a repurposed City Hall or Bridgepoint? The current Four Seasons or Robarts Library? There is only an abnegation of architecture, and they are badly done. Save TD, save the Torno penthouse at 130 Bloor W (which is being done with a sympathetic addition). Don’t save crap, which is Four Seasons (Eglinton), and Bridgepoint.