FRIDAY,APRIL3,2020 | THE GLOBE AND MAILO REAL ESTATE| H3
W
ith self-isolation, there
isn’t much to do. Walk
the dog. Walk yourself.
All while keeping social distanc-
ing in mind, of course.
But for those of us who live in
dense urban areas, there’s some-
thing that’s all around us, all the
time: architecture.
But what do I do, I hear you
ask, if I don’t have an architectu-
ral guidebook?
Go to the Architectural Con-
servancy of Ontario’s “TO Built”
website, a database of more than
11,000 buildings, which span
from the city’s earliest, Scadding
Cabin from 1794, to multiple en-
tries from 2017 – a Google search
for “TO Built” should work, or
type in acotoronto.ca/to-
built_new_detailed.php – and
type in the name of a street near
you.
That’s all fine and good, you
might say, but there’s nothing
near me to justify changing my
dog’s favourite sniffing route.
Not true! Let’s look at my neigh-
bourhood as an example. Using
the site’s user-friendly search
tools, I type “Coxwell” into the
Street Name box and click
Search. Up pop six entries, one of
which is a building I remember
from my childhood (because my
mother worked there), the for-
mer Toronto East General Hospi-
tal (now Michael Garron Hospi-
tal).
While the wing-shaped, glass-
blocked and speed-striped build-
ing looks straight out of 1935, I
learn that it was completed in
1951 and that its architect was
“K.S. Gillies.” I also learn it has no
heritage status and is classified
as “art deco.” I can choose to look
at “more buildings in this style”
or I can click on the architect’s
name, which I do. This trans-
ports me to Gillies’s entry on the
Biographical Dictionary of Archi-
tects in Canadawebsite, where I
discover that Kenneth Stevenson
Gillies was born in Guelph, Ont.,
and spent “nearly fifty years”
working for the City of Toronto
building department, where he
helped pen the Waterworks
Maintenance Complex at 505
Richmond St. W. (now undergo-
ing restoration as a food hall and
condominium by MOD Develop-
ments) and the Symes Road Mu-
nicipal Incinerator (recently re-
stored).
“I used TO Built a lot as a re-
searcher so I understood the as-
set that we had there,” says Pau-
line Berkovitz, 27, who has re-
cently become site co-ordinator
while working on a master’s
thesis in historic preservation at
Boston Architectural College. “I
use it as a sort of jumping off
point ... some of [the listings]
have an immense amount of in-
formation right there, like some-
thing like Ontario Place or one of
our research projects like Toron-
to schools or places of worship,
and then there’s other listings
that have less information but
they have links to other re-
sources.”
It was in early 2017, just after itwas announced that the highly
expressive, 1962 Davisville Junior
Public School would be demol-
ished, that the Architectural Con-
servancy of Ontario (ACO) began
its “research project” on Torontoschools. Since most don’t have
heritage protection, the ACO felt
it necessary to document them
and speak up on their behalf at
Queen’s Park (where they met
with more than two dozen
MPPs). The next year, the ACO
focused their annual symposium
on the issue. In 2019, with the
help of student photographers
and a research co-ordinator, the
ACO announced it had added
900 schools to the TO Built in-
ventory.
With that in mind, I change to
TO Built’s map view, and zoom
in to the section called “Dan-
forth” to see what schools ap-
pear. I find my rival elementary
school, Earl Beatty, built in 1925
(there are also 14 photographs to
view), and the 1923 Danforth Col-
legiate and Technical School,
which is where I thought I’d go
when I was eight-years-old and
wanted to be an auto mechanic.
Sadly, St. Brigid’s Catholic School,
where I dreamed those grease
monkey dreams, is not listed.
So, clearly, there are still build-
ings to add and work to be done.
And it should be noted that with-
out the incredible work of Bob
Krawcyzk, who began TO Built in
2002 as a personal project, there
would be no site for the ACO to
build upon. When I profiled Mr.
Krawcyzk in 2007 in this space,
he had just surpassed 8,000
buildings and was carrying a list
of 1,100 more that he intended to
add.
By 2014-15, the site had be-
come too much to manage, so
Mr. Krawcyzk handed it to the
ACO.
“It’s been beefed up a lot, and
also undergone a lot of website
improvements” since then, Ms.
Berkovitz says. “The searchingmechanism is much more so-
phisticated than it used to be.”
It’s true: One can search by
year, by architect, by location, by
style, by building use, by demol-
ished buildings only, or even hit
the “Surprise Me” button for a
random listing. As well as being
“sophisticated,” TO Built is now
more democratic: Any ACO
member can add a single build-
ing or series of buildings if they
wish, or edit existing entries if
more information surfaces
(there is talk of expanding this to
allow non-members this sort of
access, but right now the wish is
to gain memberships).
As the world waits for normal-
cy, think of TO Built as a gift: “Al-
most everybody that I know has
a intimate relationship with a
building, whether it’s their house
or the office building they work
in, or a building that they always
love as they walk past,” Ms. Ber-
kovitz says.
“One of the silver linings that
comes out of the crisis that we’re
in is that a lot of people are slow-
ing down and they are taking
walks ... so we’re noticing things
on this human scale and recog-
nizing that there’s a lot of beauty
around us.
“If everybody, with the time
that they have, could leverage
that to engage with their culture
and their community by engag-
ing with TO Built, I would be
thrilled.”TOBuilt will soon be sending
weekly walking tours of
neighbourhoods or parks to help
keep Torontonians engaged during
this period.Like theACOon
Facebook or e-mail them at
[email protected] to get on the
mailing list.In2017,theproposeddemolitionofDavisvilleJuniorPublicSchool,whichwasbuiltin1962,promptedtheArchitecturalConservancyofOntario(ACO)tobeginitsresearchprojecton
Torontoschools.By2019,ACOannouncedithadadded900schoolstotheTOBuiltwebsite’sinventory.PHOTOSBYTOBUILT
Howtoengagewitharchitecture
whileself-isolating
Withadatabaseofmore
than11,000buildings,
TOBuiltletsyoube
anarchitouristwithout
leavingyourhome
DAVE
LeBLANC
ARCHITOURISTTORONTO
Asearchfor‘Coxwell’intheTOBuiltwebsitewillbringupanentryfortheformerTorontoEastGeneralHospital(nowMichaelGarronHospital),
whichwascompletedin1951anddesignedbyarchitectK.S.Gillies.Anotherentryfoundonthewebsiteisthe1923-builtDanforthCollegiate
andTechnicalSchool.