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By Peter Kuitenbrouwer
"Bridgepoint Health" is the new name, sanitized of history or geography, for Riverdale Hospital, nestled on the side of the Don Valley just east of the Gerrard Street bridge. If you love architecture, you should stop and look, because this beautiful semi-circular building (Chapman & Hurst architects, 1961) is slated for demolition.
The west entrance of the hospital surely ranks among Toronto's most remarkable: four stainless steel poles hold up concrete umbrellas, each perhaps five metres across, and painted blue, red, yellow and green on their undersides. Inside, a mural curves behind the information desk: a crazy mosaic of waves, fish, gulls, mountains, what look like buildings, and a family standing before a blazing sun. The whole hospital is pristine, from gleaming terrazzo floors to the gorgeous cafeteria, bathed in light from floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on greenery.
John Martins-Manteiga, founder of Toronto's feisty, little-known Dominion Modern museum (www.dominionmodern.ca), can't believe they want to knock this down, and he has brought me here as part of a tour of threatened postwar Toronto landmarks, or, in his words, "Endangered Species." That's the title of Martins-Manteiga's new exhibition, coming to the museum, at the corner of College and Bay streets, this winter.
Toronto is famous for wrecking its beauty. I first met Martins-Manteiga 10 years ago when he fought, and lost, the battle to save the John Inglis building, west of Strachan Avenue south of King Street West. He wrote a 1997 book, Clearcut, about his fruitless campaign to save the Woolworth Building at Bay Street and Adelaide Street West. Since then, he also fought, and failed, to stop Loblaws from gutting Maple Leaf Gardens for a supermarket, and Pearson airport from demolishing Terminal One.
Every campaign Martins-Manteiga vows, "This is my last one. I'm not doing this again." But then he's back at it, and God bless him, because Toronto needs him. In his 2005 book Mean City, he writes of the post-war building boom, "We built big and with vision and tenacity. The Toronto Style was modern, with a naked freshness that emphasized simplicity using indigenous materials."
At Bridgepoint Health, chief financial officer Dan Hill confirms to us his $200-million plan, put to the city in August, 2004, to smash this 504-bed hospital and build a new one.
"The redevelopment of the hospital is in order to serve the patients in facilities that are appropriate to their needs," he says. "This building is obsolete. The square footage per person is less than half current standards. There are four bathrooms for 50 patients, and there is one shower per floor."
The demolition, in short, seems motivated by plumbing issues. Why not just add toilets and showers?
"In order for us to be able to do what we want to do on the site, this building can't remain," he insists.
"What will happen to this mosaic?" I ask, pointing to the wall. Hill does not reply. He does note that Bridgepoint will save the Don Jail as part of its new plan. How the hospital can use a century-old building designed as a jail but not use a 40-year-old structure designed as a hospital is something he does not explain.
In the cafeteria Jenna Richardson serves us. "I hope they don't tear it down," she says. "It would be so sad. My mom worked here 27 years. She was a nurse."
We head uptown to the Bata Shoe Headquarters (John P. Parkin Associates, 1964) whose death warrant city council signed last month, to make way for a culture centre for the Aga Khan. The two-storey building, on Wynford Drive just east of Don Mills Road, features repeating cement columns on the entire ground floor, which at their tops splay like symmetrical tree branches. This is a head office from a time when the future was cool.
"Look at this, Pete," Martins-Manteiga says. "This is like the Acropolis. It's on a hill. This is Parkin at the height of his game. Look at the complexity of the column system. These columns have a direct link to [Parkin's] Union Station in Ottawa." He snaps a photo and mutters under his breath, "The undertaker."
"I'm bla-bla-bla-ing," he adds. "In the future people will know what I'm talking about, but it will be too late. There will be nothing left. Imagine going to the AGO and taking a flame-thrower to each and every painting in a gallery. This is what we're doing to our modern buildings."
Martins-Manteiga does have allies in his fight to save modern buildings: Ernest Buchner, executive director of Heritage Toronto, urged City Council to designate the Bata building, which he calls "an excellent example of High Modernist architecture." Council ignored him. "Council felt the proposal from the Aga Khan would be threatened," he says. Buchner is now working with others to preserve the Bata building by moving it.
Rollo Myers, who manages the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, also agrees our modern buildings need protection. "I believe in layers of history," he says. "You can have your Corbusier chairs and your Frank Lloyd Wright loungers with your Queen Anne." He is particularly concerned about the city's plans to change Nathan Phillips Square (Viljo Revell, 1965). "It's like chopping the corner out of a Rembrandt," he says.
There are so many battles right now: McLaughlin Planetarium, the five Peter Dickinson towers in Regent's Park, the O'Keefe Centre. We can't visit them all.
Instead we head to Inn on the Park, on Leslie Avenue at Eglinton Avenue West, an outlandish white, angular hotel jutting out of the hill, trimmed with carefully sculpted cedars. Martins-Manteiga, as part of an oral history project to preserve stories of Canada's modern period, interviewed Isadore Sharp, chief executive of Four Seasons Hotels, which built this hotel. Mr. Sharp told him that Peter Dickinson, Canada's most celebrated architect of the late 1950s (most famous for the CIBC tower in Montreal) designed the Inn on his deathbed, in 1961.
Today the Inn is on its deathbed. Greenspoon, the demolition company, is here ahead of us, and crews are filling bins as they begin wrecking it to make way for a Lexus dealership. Martins-Manteiga and I walk along the west side, where each room is indented on a 45-degree angle to give guests a veranda, and privacy.
"The crowd that would dig this is the Wallpaper crowd," says Martins-Manteiga. "And [the owners] are completely missing it. There's a whole market for this. Imagine coming out in the night with a drink and looking down in the valley and trains are passing on the bridge. It's very romantic, you know."
Or was. We stop by the contents sale -- which has plenty of cool stuff left, cheap -- and John picks out an early 1960s stainless steel garbage can, $1. At least that piece of history is safe.
Riverdale ripe for condo conversion: Globe and Mail, June 17th, 2005.
Critique of the meeting: Globe and Mail, July 9th, 2005.
Demolition of significant modern buildings picks up momentum: Globe and Mail, Nov. 26th, 2005.
History vs Healthcare? Or not...?: Eye, Dec. 8th, 2005.
Debate swirls around hospital's fate at Council meeting.: National Post, Jan. 18th, 2006
Riverdale Hospital for wrecking?: Star, Jan. 25th, 2006
Keep historic half-round around as it is: Star, Jan. 26th, 2006.
Demolition plan roundly criticized: National Post, Feb. 2nd, 2006.
Development arguments wanting for logic: Now, Feb. 9, 2006.
Demolition is environmentally unconscienable: National Post, Feb. 17th, 2006.
Locals want to know: Why give land away?: National Post, March 11th, 2006.
Citizens catch Bridgepoint hi-jinx: Now, March 16th, 2006.
Progressives on Council fumble the Bridgepoint
scheme: Now, March 23rd,
2006.
Save Riverdale
Toronto Architectural Conservancy
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