[URBAN NOTE] "How the CN Tower killed Toronto’s rooftop lookouts"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's Chris Bateman describes how mid-century Toronto's observation decks were undermined by the CN Tower. Nice photos, too.

There was a time when observation decks were all the rage in Toronto. The designers and developers of tall buildings like TD Centre, Commerce Court, and City Hall, keen to show off their creations to the public, installed top floor public viewing galleries with panoramic views of the city. One had a restaurant, another doubled as an art gallery, a third had an aviary.

These early privately-owned public spaces (POPS) gave many people their first chance to look down on the city from above. They were popular, too. About a million people visited the observation floor at the top of TD Centre every year. That was until the CN Tower showed up and spoiled the party in 1976.

One of the oldest and best-known closed observation decks in Toronto sits atop the original Commerce Court tower at King and Bay. When the building was completed in 1931, it was the tallest building in the British Empire. Crowds of people gathered on the unfinished roof in 1930 to watch the R100 dirigible balloon―the pride of Great Britain’s budding Imperial Airship Scheme―glide silently over Toronto.

Today, the tower is easy to miss among the city’s taller skyscrapers, but the exquisite detail of the roof was always meant to be seen up close. Massive carved heads, representing courage, foresight, observation, and enterprise, still peer out from the thirty-second floor observation balcony, though the visitors are long gone. The deck, which doesn’t have a safety railing, is too dangerous, the building’s owners say.

The 1972 addition to Commerce Court was built with an observation level, too. The 57-floor International Style Bay Street building robbed the complex’s original tower of its downtown view and trumped it for height. When it opened the new tower was the tallest in Toronto, beating neighbouring TD Centre by about 17 metres.