Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Please Insert Station and Try Again
The Art of Not Knowing
If You Tweet It, He Will Come
Edgewater Hotel Sign Comes Down
She was crowned with her towering spire on April 2, 1975, rising nearly six hundred metres above the Toronto waterfront. A year and a half later, on October 1, 1976, her doors were opened to the public for the very first time, the jewel of the skyline and a beacon to the world—and to anyone with misplaced bearings in the downtown core.
Through it all, including mid-winter flurries of falling ice and dizzying acts of daredevil madness, the CN Tower—heralded as one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World in 1995—has been the signature of our city, a monolithic beauty unparalleled or unchallenged anywhere on the planet, at least until recently. Enshrined as the "World's Tallest Tower" in the 1982 Guinness World Records, many were convinced that the title would be lost to the Burj Dubai, a stratospheric 818-metre supertall skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when it soared past the CN Tower's free-standing record on September 12, 2007.
As it turns out, we didn't have much to worry about.
"I can confirm that the Toronto icon will retain its record," says Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records, "as a tower is defined by Guinness World Records and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat as a building in which less than 50% of the construction is usable floor space." Despite its numerous attractions and appointments, including restaurants, shopping areas, and its head-spinning observation decks, the tower is not considered a "building" in the same respect as the Burj Dubai, which the CTBUH defines as "a structure that is designed for residential, business, or manufacturing purposes."
"An essential characteristic of a building," it continues, "is that it has floors."
On Monday, September 21, coinciding with the release of Guinness World Records 2010, the CN Tower will be officially recognized as the World's Tallest Tower once more, during a celebration at Horizons Restaurant to renew the old girl's reign. Torontonians, meanwhile, whether navigating downtown laneways at 4 a.m. or leaping maniacally on the glass floor, can continue to do so with world-beating pride.
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Great now I've got that song stuck in my head.
I wonder who the CN Tower people had to blow to get this little coup?
Seems kind of odd to refer to the worlds tallest free-standing phallic symbol as a "she."
@Spacejack
I'm sure Lady Gaga would disagree.
I always thought it was symptomatic of a national lack of confidence that everyone memorized the term "free standing structure" as if it meant anything to anyone but us.
The idea being, the tower wasn't the tallest building in the world because it didn't have stacking stories, but it wasn't the tallest tower in the world because somewhere in Russia maybe (?) there was a taller one held up with guy wires.
Free standing structure solved the problem by giving us a term we could own. Oh, how great a nation!
PS did I make up that guy wire thing? Please someone post a picture of a tower taller than ours, so we can stop using cheap symbols to represent Canada...
Teach the controversy.
Actually, free standing is a term used for other phenomena. Mount Kilimanjaro, for example, is the world's tallest free standing mountain.
I was visiting the Eiffel tower couple months back and took the stairs down. At each 'deck' there were signs outlining some of the tallest structures in the world and how they relate to the Eiffel tower (aka the "metal asparagus"). Burj Dubai, Taipei, Sears tower, Empire state building... but no love for Toronto. I think I have to agree with David that the technicality for which we feel we have a place in that list is kinda sad.
Having said that - the LED lights have made old CN new again, and although the Eiffel is absolutely mesmerizing at nite, I feel CN is a close second. :)
You're right sbot- the lights made me feel fond of the tower for the first time in ages. A long-overdue improvement!
Though I enjoy the mention of the CN Tower as a "freestanding structure". That certainly is one of those phrases that has been pounded into my Torontonian head since birth.
Addendum: One of my favourite tourist misspeaks of all time had one woman pointing out, "That's the CNN Tower, but the glass floors are too disorienting. We can just skip it."
This is great news that the CN Tower will be recognized world wide in any capacity. Especially with the lighting now apart of the whole spectacle. I'm happy to live in a city with a structure like that around.
It remains the tallest free-standing structure in the Americas! lol
Perhaps the tower will become a symbol of Canada's inadequacy, needing to tell the world it is the tallest and best in some category.
Let's just appreciate it for looking cool, in the same way the French are proud of the Eiffel Tower.
Eventually the world will have to recognize that it is the Tallest Freestanding Pseudo-Building Tower-like Structure with Purple Lights and the Letters "C" and "N" in its name.
How can they keep that glory from us?
Why are so many people on here so cynical?
WELCOME TO TEH INTERNETS!
I know!! Thank you for saying that. I am getting SO weary of the cynicism... and I realize it is very much an internet thing... and, I might add, very west-end hipster Toronto... it's getting old. Maybe "anti-cynicism" could be the new cool? Please!
After 9/11 we lived in a "post-ironic" age for several weeks. It was a sad but beautiful time.
I know! Remember how it was okay, even encouraged, to be earnest? Sigh.
I believe that the "free-standing" adjective is not spurious or superfluous as some here seem to suggest. The 26-month effort to construct the 553-metre free-standing tower was a greater engineering accomplishment than the 30-day effort for the 629-metre guy-wire-supported KVLY-TV mast or the 647-metre Warsaw radio mast which collapsed. Furthermore, the Chicago-based (i.e., non-Canadian) Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat also seems to believe that the nuances of "free-standing" and the definition of buildings are important in the taxonomy of tall structures.
Title or no, I'm still proud of the CN Tower as an icon of Toronto.
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As to cynicism, it's easy currency on the internet. It typically requires much less effort to disagree with or dislike one or two particular points than it is to engage in respectful discourse and debate. That said, we all have the choice of treating such comments as we would funny money: we can simply refuse to accept it and not assign it any value.
Being cynical makes you cool! Boo, I hate everything!
Maybe I'm missing the point, but I think suggesting we're hanging far too much of our identity on icons like the CN Tower is asking is critical, but not cynical.
Cynical means you've given up on something being deeper and more meaningful; you acquiesce to shallowness.
Critical implies the hope and the possibility of depth.