Results tagged “artdeco”

The Eglinton was the grandest of Toronto's Art Deco movie houses. People from all over Toronto flocked to Eglinton near Avenue Road for the grand opening showing of King of Burlesque. Kaplan and Sprachman, the prolific pair who would design over one hundred cinemas in Canada, won the Governor General's architecture award for the building in 1937: although it was asymmetrical, its elegant design and fine interior detailing invested a trip to the movies with an aura of sophistication, its defining feature the colourful, neon-lit marquee that's been a neighbourhood icon for generations.

There's a certain charm in Toronto's pre-war lowrise apartment buildings, usually consisting of three to five stories with characteristics of the era like high ceilings, wood floors and crown moldings. Though a trend only recently back in fashion, it was also a time when buildings had names like The Gloucester Mansions, The Manhattan and the LaVerne.

Torontoist has long been puzzled by The Mystery Bookstore at Bathurst and Dupont. Every time we stroll on over to Madeleine's for our favourite slice (which is often, as pie helps us concentrate), we invariably take a moment to admire the odd assortment of Art Deco busts collecting dust in the window. The Mystery Bookstore is aptly named, though its mysteries are not of the literary kind. We seem to recall a time when it was a proper bookstore, but that was ages ago (we have vague memories of dusty stacks of unsorted books and a large proprieter with poor hygeine), and we can't remember its current incarnation having ever been open.

New contributor Mathew will be posting regular on all things TIFF. Here goes:

John Bentley Mays, TOist’s favourite U of T architecture prof and Globe columnist, reports on Burka Varacalli Architect’s proposal for Uptown Residences on Balmuto Street, situating it on the puzzlingly atrocious Bloor-and-Yonge intersection, indisputably the psychological and geographical centre of the city but marked by such stylistically devoid developments as the Hudson’s Bay Centre and Harvey’s restaurants. The Uptown is to be a relatively modest and restrained building, standing 48 storeys tall and foregoing the popular ‘pointy chapeaux’ top in favour of an elegant jazz-age Deco pedestal top.