Ask Torontoist: What Are You, Big Orange Tower?

By Edward Brown

Ask Torontoist features questions posed by you, and answered by our elite team of specially trained investigative experts (also known as our staff). Send your questions to [email protected].

Reader Taylor Roberts asks:

In midtown Toronto just west of Yonge, there are a few towers, each about fifteen stories high, painted orange and white. The towers don’t appear to have any electronic equipment on them, only some small red lights… What are these towers?

Tower at the intersection of Eglinton Avenue West and Duplex Avenue. Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist

Torontoist answers:

Of the towers in question, after searching high and, well, higher, Torontoist could locate only one. And then, those asked about its purpose were stumped. Emails were sent, telephone calls were placed, all to no avail. City staff, the local historical society—all drew a blank.
Causing even more difficulty was the fact that the building the tower is mounted to has no posted street number.
Even Toronto’s finest were stymied. Fifty-three Division is located directly across the street from the steel lattice tower and so we wandered into the station, sure an officer from the local constabulary could provide an answer. After all, this was their beat. When asked if he knew of the tower’s purpose, the desk sergeant on duty said, rather flatly, that he did not. After giving us a powerfully suspicious once-over with several other officers, the desk sergeant sheepishly confessed that until we had pointed it out, he had never even noticed the tower before.
The copper shouldn’t have felt sheepish. Toronto Hydro, whose name is noticeably engraved across the face of the imposing building the tower sits on, also had no knowledge of this mysterious orange edifice, and apparently—as we later found out—they own it.
Undeterred, we were finally put in touch with Neil Stewart, a frontline manager for maintenance with Hydro One. Stewart said the purpose of the tower was obvious, in that its colour revealed its function. Towers coloured orange and white, Stewart explained, indicate they are intended for communication purposes.
Who knew?
Officially, the tower in question is classified as a microwave transmission tower.
Why is there a microwave transmission tower in the middle of a thriving residential and commercial neighbourhood, you ask? The answer lies in the function of the building to which the tower is anchored. Originally built as an electrical substation in the early 1920s, by the mid-’50s the building was being used as a command centre for Toronto Hydro’s northern district operations. From here, utility vehicles were dispatched on service calls, and the microwave transmission tower was a means of maintaining radio contact. Eventually, Toronto Hydro ceased using this location as a command post and moved away. There must not have been enough space in the moving van for the tower because it was left behind.
As of today, the substation still maintains its operations, but the tower is no longer used for communication purposes or, as far as we can tell, anything at all.