Old Toronto Star Building

The Old Toronto Star Building was an Art Deco office tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The building was located at 80 King Street West and was the headquarters of the Toronto Star newspaper from 1929 until 1970. The building was demolished in 1972 to make way for the construction of First Canadian Place.

Toronto Star Building
Toronto Star building in 1961.
General information
StatusDemolished
TypeOffice
(Newspaper publishing)
Location80 King West
Toronto, Ontario
Completed1929
Demolished1972
CostCA$1.5 million[1]
OwnerToronto Star
Height
Roof88 metres (289 ft)
Technical details
Floor count22
Design and construction
ArchitectChapman and Oxley

The skyscraper is the second tallest voluntarily demolished building in Canada behind the 120.1 m (394 ft) tall Empire Landmark Hotel that was demolished in 2019.

Overview

The building was designed by the firm of Chapman and Oxley and opened in 1929. It was 22 storeys and 88 metres (289 ft) tall. The front facade around the main entrance was clad in granite, the entrance itself having a bronze screen. The first three floors of the building were clad in granite; the upper floors in limestone. On the third floor, the facade was wrapped in elaborate stonework in geometric and floral motifs, which also adorned the interior and the limestone piers at the crest of the building.[2] The first six floors were built in reinforced concrete, while the tower was built with a structural steel frame.[1]

Decorative stone panels and parapets from the Toronto Star building's sixth and other floors, now located at the Guild Park and Gardens.

The first six stories held the offices of the Star, and the rest was rental office space. The 21st floor housed the newspaper's radio studios. The ground floor facing King Street housed a few retail stores and a Stoodleigh's Restaurant at the east end. The basement had a restaurant and barbershop.[2]

Some stonework from the building can be found at Guild Park and Gardens, along with other portions of facades of lost buildings of Toronto.[3]

Superman co-creator Joe Shuster used the building as a model for the Daily Planet Building.[4][5]

gollark: > 1. lets us see in the nightThis can easily be replaced with "torch" or "streetlight" technology. Alternatively, replace the moon with a giant mirror or directional light system.> 2. Keeps the earth spinning moreIt does not.> 3. Makes tides, which can create free energyNuclear is cooler anyway.> 4. Where the fuck would we put all the moon parts when we blow it upEither convert them to a nice ring, which will look really cool, or just move them to Jupiter or something. Or possibly use them to build tastefully decorated affordable housing.> 5. It costs money to buy explosivesWe could crowdfund the lunar destruction project.
gollark: I hope transistors are restored soon.
gollark: <@462202902031761418> Don't play background music on your website. It is annoying and probably half the reason *why* autoplay is blocked. You probably can't bypass it in modern browsers because a lot of effort has been put in place to make it that way.
gollark: “If you're trying to stop me, I outnumber you 1 to 6.” “Never trust an unstable asymptotic giant branch star. Stick with main sequences and dwarfs.” “You know, fire is the leading cause of fire.”“if you can’t find time to write, destroy the concept of time itself”“Strength is a strength just like other strengths.”
gollark: “In yet another sentence of mine that will in no way be taken out of context later: the answer is always murder”

See also

References
  • Morawetz, Tim (2009). Art Deco architecture in Toronto. Toronto, ON: Glue Inc. ISBN 9780981241302.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
Notes
  1. Morawetz 2009, p. 25.
  2. Morawetz 2009, pp. 24–25.
  3. Boyd, Kevin A. (March 18, 2009). "Joe Shuster's final interview with Henry Mietkiewicz". The Joe Shuster Awards. Retrieved 2014-05-02.
  4. Bateman, Chris (November 13, 2012). "That time when the Toronto Star was the Daily Planet". www.blogto.com. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  5. Stamp, Jimmy (June 12, 2013). "The Architecture of Superman: A Brief History of The Daily Planet". Smithsonian. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.