[LINK] Museum Station, revived

[rfmcdonald]

The toronto Livejournal community has reported that the long-delayed plan to refurbish the Museum TTC station has finally gotten off the ground.

Come January, there will be two Royal Ontario Museums, one above ground, one below.

The Museum subway station is in the middle of a $5 million remake that will see its 48 columns transformed into copies of objects from the ROM's fabled collection. And for good measure, there will also be pieces from the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art just across Queen's Park.

"We realized we needed to find things that originally were load bearing," [architect Gary] McCluskie says. "They had the heft and the size we needed. We came up with five objects and they will be installed in a repeating pattern along the 48 columns in Museum station."

These objects include a late 19th-century house post made by the Oweekeno people in Rivers Inlet, B.C., a stone carving of the ancient Egyptian god of death and fertility, Osiris, as well as a Toltec warrior from Central America.

The copies were made in Oakville by Design Plaster Mouldings using a vandal- and graffiti-proof concrete reinforced with glass. When completed, they will be wrapped around the pillars that extend along the length of station at track level. The upper storey is not a part of the project.

There's an artist's conception of the completed station over at the toronto link. It looks good.