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Thearchitecture of Toronto is an eclectic combination of architectural styles, ranging from 19th centuryGeorgian architecture to 21st centurypostmodern architecture and beyond.
Initially, the city was on the periphery of the architectural world, embracing styles and ideas developed in Europe and the United States with only limited local variation.
However, a few unique styles of architecture have emerged fromToronto since the late 19th century, such as thebay and gable style house and theAnnex style house.
Toronto's older buildings are influenced by the city's history and culture. Most of the city's older buildings adopted designs found in other areas of theBritish Empire, such as Georgian,Victorian,Edwardian, and variousrevival-styled designs that were popular during the 19th and early 20th century.
In the years followingWorld War II, the city experienced massive growth and adopted a number ofmodernist and postmodernist architectural styles, including theInternational Style and thetowers in the park concept. With the adoption of theGreenbelt throughout theGreater Toronto Area in 2005, the region has experienceda large condo boom amid theCanadian property bubble with many designs adoptingneomodern styles.
Since the end of World War II, many prominent architects have done work in the city, including Toronto nativeFrank Gehry,Daniel Libeskind,Norman Foster,Will Alsop,I. M. Pei, andLudwig Mies van der Rohe. Reflecting this eclectic combination of architecture, Lawrence Richards, a member of the Faculty of Architecture at theUniversity of Toronto, has said "Toronto is a new, brash, rag-tag place—a big mix of periods and styles."[1]
The growth of the city is influenced by thegeography of the city, most notably theToronto ravine system and the Greenbelt, a permanently protected area of green space, farmland, forests, wetlands, and watersheds within theGolden Horseshoe.
The natural geography of the city also provided builders with a variety of resources to build from. The most abundant raw material was theshale layer underlying the city, as well as the abundance of clay, making brick an especially inexpensive and available material, and resulting in many of the city's buildings being built from brick.
Toronto is built on the former lake bed ofLake Iroquois. This large flat expanse presents few natural limits to growth, and throughout its history, Toronto has sprawled outward and today has a ring ofsuburbs that spans hundreds of square kilometres. In 2005, the provincial government has attempted to place an artificial limit to this growth in the form of aGreenbelt around the city.
The Upper Canada government planned the townships that later became the modern city of Toronto out on agrid system ofconcession lines that separated rural landholdings with concession lines inYork Township being spaced about 2.01 kilometres (1.25 mi) apart. Major avenues were established along each concession line as the city spread outward. These avenues run straight with few diversions for long stretches, and Toronto is notable for the considerable length of its major streets. Most of the avenues go from one side of the city to the other and often continue deep into the neighbouring suburbs. Suburban expansion replaced these rural lots with subdivisions made of crescents and cul-de-sacs. These local road networks were designed to reduce and slow traffic, redirecting vehicles to the avenues. These wide avenues that even run through the central city have also made it easier for Toronto to retain astreetcar system, which was among thefew North American cities to do so.
The most important obstacle to construction is Toronto'snetwork of ravines. Historically, city planners filled in many of the ravines, and when this was not possible, planners mostly ignored them, though today, the remaining ones are embraced for their natural beauty. Ravines have helped isolate some central neighbourhoods from the rest of the city, and have contributed to the exclusivity of certain neighbourhoods such asRosedale.
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Thanks to its vast hinterland, Toronto designers have had access to a wide array of raw materials for construction. Due to the clay sediments of the former lake bed that Toronto is built upon, and but more prominently the shale layer underlying this area of North America,brick has been an especially cheap and available material for almost the city's entire history. Much of it was provided by theDon Valley Brick Works, Domtar's brick division, Canada Brick and Brampton Brick, whose output can still be found in thousands of structures across the city and throughout the surrounding regions. Throughout the city, most homes from all eras are made of brick or brick andcinder block. Commercial and industrial builders also long embraced brick, with theDistillery District being a prominent example, though today, more efficient materials, such asconcrete blocks, are more common for commercial projects. Prominent landmarks have also gone to greater expense and generally eschewed simple brick. Older banks and government buildings used stone, most commonly limestone, and modern attempts to marvel have embraced modern materials such asconcrete andaluminum, in addition to extensive use of glass (glazing). Even today, the overwhelming bulk of residential buildings constructed in Toronto are clad in brick.
Sandstone was also historically a readily available building material, with large deposits quarried from theCredit River valley. More expensive than brick, but more ornate, it was used for many early landmarks such as theOntario Legislature,Old City Hall, andVictoria College, giving those buildings a characteristic pinkish colour. It is also the main material used in the unique Annex-style house.
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The city of Toronto originally formed as a result of its good harbour, and the port was the source of the city's prosperity for most of its early history. The oldest parts of the city are thus by the harbour, with newer growth spreading out in all directions possible. Around the harbour grew up a belt of industrial structures, especially just east and west of downtown. These included massive facilities such asGooderham and Worts whiskey distillery andMassey Ferguson's farm equipment factories. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, therailways became Toronto's main connection with the outside world, and further industrial areas grew up around the freight lines, in areas such asWeston andEast York.
In the 1970s,deindustrialization began to have a dramatic effect on Toronto. By the 1990s, almost all of the older factories by the waterfront were gone. Some of the newer facilities further north still remain, but are constantly disappearing. Many of the more historic industrial buildings have been converted into lofts and offices with some becoming tourist destinations in their own right with stores and restaurants. Most have been demolished, and in their place, dozens of condominium towers have been erected by the lake shore. There are also still large stretches of abandoned industrial land in thePort Lands district and other parts of Toronto awaiting a redevelopment plan.
Few structures survive from the earliest period of Toronto's history. The oldest residence, and structure still standing, in Toronto isScadding Cabin. Completed in 1794, Scadding Cabin is presently used as a heritage museum after it was relocated toExhibition Place next to theFort Rouillé site. Finished in 1807,John Cox Cottage, on Broadview Avenue, just north of East Chinatown, is the oldest known house in the city still used as a residence.
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Two of Toronto's oldest surviving brick houses areCampbell House andThe Grange. Both are brick structures built in theGeorgian style during the first half of the 19th century, reflecting the tastes of Toronto's elite in that era. Although the Georgian style had long been out of favour in the United States, it remained popular in Toronto, with residents hesitant to adoptearly American architectural styles. InLoyalist-dominatedUpper Canada, the style was embraced with fervour in part because of its British connections. Incongruously, it had also fallen out of fashion in Britain by this time, where it was considered outmoded, but in Toronto, it remained popular until the 1850s. When theColonial revival was embraced in the United States in the 1890s, Georgian architecture also returned to Toronto. Structures continue to be built in the style today. It has been especially popular with the city's elite and many Georgian manors can be found in wealthy neighbourhoods such asRosedale and theBridle Path.
The late nineteenth century Torontonians embracedVictorian architecture and all of its diverse revival styles. Victorian-style housing dominates a number of the city's older neighbourhoods, most notablyCabbagetown,Trinity-Bellwoods,Parkdale,Rosedale, andThe Annex. These neighbourhoods hold some of the largest collections of Victorian houses in North America. During this period Toronto also developed some unique styles of housing. Thebay-and-gable house was a simple and cost effective design that also aped the elegance of Victorian mansions. Built of the abundant red brick, the design was also well suited to the narrow lots of Toronto. Mostly built in lower and middle class areas the style could be used both for town houses, semi-detached, and stand alone buildings. Hundreds of examples still survive in neighbourhoods such as Cabbagetown and Parkdale.[2] A residential architectural style unique to Toronto is theAnnex style house. Built by the city's wealthy and mostly found in the neighbourhood they are named after, these houses contain diverse and eclectic elements borrowed from dozens of different styles. These houses are built of a mix of brick and sandstone,turrets,domes, and other ornamentation abound.[3]
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The post war years and the rise of the personal automobile saw the rapid rise of the suburbs, as occurred across North America. The most important suburban development was that ofDon Mills inNorth York. Begun in 1952, it was the first planned community in Canada, and it initiated many practices that would become standard in Toronto suburbs. The Don Mills project put into practice many of the ideas of theGarden city movement, based on the ideas developed by SirEbenezer Howard, creating a multi-use community focused on distinct neighbourhoods.
The earliest suburbs in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke mostly consisted of small single family homes oftenbungalows. Over time suburban houses have grown in size and moved away from the simplistic post-war designs embracing theneo-eclectic style. Toronto suburbs are different in character than those of other North American cities. During the 1960s and 1970s, city planners tried to curb sprawl by encouraging high population density in the suburbs, with many modernist "Tower in the Park" style apartment complexes scattered across the suburbs, with several Toronto boroughs working to build their own central business districts and move beyond being bedroom suburbs to being centres of business and industry as well. This has had mixed results; this policy has made Toronto overall denser than most other North American cities, which has reduced sprawl and made it easier to provide city services such as mass transit. At the same time, planners avoided creatingmixed-use areas, forcing suburban residents to work and shop elsewhere.
The postwar years also saw the rise of apartment-style housing. In the 1960s and 1970s, this kind of housing was mostly focused on low to middle income residents. Beginning in the 1950s, the city bulldozed older lower-income neighbourhoods, replacing them with housing projects, ultimately destroying large sections of Victorian housing. The earliest and most notorious example of such projects wasRegent Park. It replaced a large portion of Cabbagetown with a series of low-rise and high-rise buildings that quickly became crime-ridden and even more depressed than the neighbourhood it replaced. In later years, similar projects such asMoss Park andAlexandra Park were less disastrous, but also far from successful. Canada's densest community,St. James Town, was built in this era as a high-rise community of private and public housing in separate towers, also replacing a Victorian neighbourhood. These patterns changed dramatically beginning in the 1970s andgentrification began transforming once poor neighbourhoods, such as Cabbagetown, into some of the city's most popular and expensive real estate.
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Outside of the core, even new neighbourhoods experienced significant high-rise apartment building construction, as builders embraced the "towers in the park" design, invented byLe Corbusier. The towers were built further from the sidewalk, leaving room on the property around the edifice for parking, lawns, trees, and other landscaping. They are typically simple, brick-clad high-rise buildings with rectangular footprints and little ornamentation other than repeating series ofbalconies for each apartment. However, some apartment buildings from this era utilize less conventional designs in the "tower in the park" format, such as the Prince Arthur Towers, Jane-Exbury Towers and 44 Walmer Road designed byUno Prii.
In 1972, the Canadian tax code was radically altered making rental housing much less attractive to investors. At the same time,deindustrialization opened a number of new areas to residential development. The new projects took the form of high-risecondominiums. This form of housing was introduced in the province's Condominium Act in the 1960s, but it was not until the 1980s that condos become very popular. An initial condo boom started in 1986, but the market collapsed in thelate 1980s and early 1990s recession, and many investors were badly mauled.[4]
In 1995, condo prices were still 30 percent below the earlier highs.[5] That year,a new boom began in Toronto that has continued to this day. An unprecedented number of new projects have been built in Toronto. In 2000,Condo Life magazine listed 152 separate projects underway within the city of Toronto.[6] By 2007, the number of projects in the GTA had reached 247.[7] This development has led to some observers, such as Natalie Alcoba of theNational Post, calling theManhattanization of Toronto in reference tothe densely built-up island borough of New York City.[8]
This development has been concentrated in the downtown core, especially in the former industrial areas just outside the central business district. The largest such project isCityPlace, a cluster of condo towers on former railway lands by the lake shore. This $2 billion project will eventually consist of 20 different towers housing some 12,000 people.[9]Transit-oriented developments are also common in Toronto, such as atNorth York Centre and Sheppard Avenue East along thenamesake subway line and Sheppard West along the subway line's future westward extension toSheppard West station.
Secondary suites have been permitted in Toronto since 2012 with laneway housing being permitted since 2018 and garden suites being permitted since 2020.[10]
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Toronto is the commercial centre of Canada. Many of the country's largest firms are based there, and most others keep a major presence in the city. Among Canada's oldest and most prominent firms are theBig Five banks and the banks have erected many of Toronto's most prominent buildings. TheFinancial District is centred on the intersection ofBay Street andKing Street in the heart of downtown. The blocks at each corner of this intersection are home to office towers for the major banks. This cluster includes four of Canada's five tallest buildings.
At the southwest of Bay Street and King Street isMies van der Rohe'sToronto-Dominion Centre, a complex of six blackInternational Style towers. Its tallest tower once dominated the Toronto skyline as the city's first modern skyscraper and the tallest building in Canada from 1967 to 1972.[11] On the southeast corner isCIBC'sCommerce Court complex. It is a cluster of four office buildings. The first building, known since the 1970s as Commerce Court North, was built in 1930 as the headquarters. Designed by the firmDarling and Pearson, the 34-storey tower was the tallest building in the British Empire / Commonwealth of Nations until 1962. In 1972, three other buildings were erected, thus creating the Commerce Court complex: Commerce Court West designed byI. M. Pei (the tallest building in the complex, at 57 storeys, and the tallest building in Canada from 1972 to 1976), Commerce Court East (14 storeys), and Commerce Court South (5 storeys). Across the intersection on the northwestern corner isFirst Canadian Place, housing the head offices of theBank of Montreal. It was designed byEdward Durell Stone and originally clad inCarrara marble. Since 1975, it has held the title of Canada's tallest office building with a height of 298 metres (978 ft).Scotia Plaza, headquarters ofScotiabank, is the second-tallest building in Canada and is the newest of the office towers at that intersection, having been completed in 1988. Several other office towers are found just beyond Bay Street and King Street. To the south is theRoyal Bank Plaza, theRoyal Bank of Canada's main building in Toronto. At Bay Street and Wellington Street isTD Canada Trust Tower, the third-tallest building in Canada, and its mate, theBay Wellington Tower.
CIBC will move its head office toCIBC Square in theSouth Core neighbourhood south of the Financial District in the mid-2020s.
Many of Toronto's early hotels were small inns and taverns that were built along each of the major routes out of the city. The oldest surviving hotel in Toronto isMontgomery's Inn in Etobicoke, which was built in 1832. TheLambton House is another surviving hotel structure that also served those travelling onDundas Street. Both hotels had since been converted as museums.
The arrival of the railroad in the mid-nineteenth century dramatically changed travel patterns, and new hotels from this era were clustered around the railroad stations. Outside the central core, smaller hotels grew up to serve the stations in what were then the outer reaches of the city. In the west, these included theGladstone Hotel and theDrake Hotel, while in the east,Broadview Hotel and theNew Edwin Hotel were built.
The twentieth century saw a new generation of hotels, much larger and more monumental than before as theskyscraper came to prominence. TheKing Edward Hotel was established in 1903, and is the oldest major hotel still in operation in the city. In 1927, the Queen's was demolished and replaced by theRoyal York Hotel. At the time, the new hotel was the tallest building in Canada and quickly became the city's most elite lodging. In the then-northern part of the city, this era also saw the erection of thePark Plaza in 1929.[12]
The 1970s and 1980s saw several major hotel projects in downtown Toronto, with theSheraton Centre, Toronto Hilton, Sutton Place (which has since been reconstructed as a condo), and Four Seasons adding thousands of new rooms to the market. The economic downturn at the end of the 1980s saw several hotels run into financial trouble. Since the mid-2000s, a booming real estate market, especially in downtown Toronto, has led to a number of new hotel projects, often in combination with condominium projects. An unprecedented number of major hotel projects were completed in central Toronto, includingThe St. Regis Toronto (formerly known as Trump International Hotel and Tower then The Adelaide Hotel Toronto), theRitz-Carlton,Living Shangri-La, a newFour Seasons Hotel and Residences Toronto, and theDelta Toronto Hotel.
A widely implemented and important concept in the Toronto cityscape is that of theMain Street (not to be confused with the street actually named Main Street inEast Toronto, which is not the city's "main" street), which entails a streetscape that is
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characterized by buildings on small lots (frontages less than 12.5 metres (41 ft)) ranging in height from 2 to 5 storeys. These buildings have street-related retail uses at grade and residential uses above. Typically, they are built to the lot line and span the width of the lot. These characteristics produce the familiar retail strip in which there is a continuous wall of retail activity and there is a direct relationship between the main entrance of a store and the public sidewalk.[13]
The Main Street is the concept of small avenues and store frontages on busy roads, which maintain the vitality of communities and the continuity of the streetscape.
Designed byEberhard Zeidler, the multi-levelToronto Eaton Centre represented one of North America's first downtown shopping malls. It was designed as a multi-levelled, vaulted glass-ceiling galleria, modelled after theGalleria Vittorio Emanuele II inMilan, Italy. At the time of its opening in 1977, the interior design of the Toronto Eaton Centre was considered quite revolutionary and influenced shopping centre architecture throughout North America. Plans originally called for the demolition ofOld City Hall and theChurch of the Holy Trinity, but these were eventually dropped after a public outcry. Ultimately, Louisa Street, Downey's Lane and Albert Lane were closed and disappeared from the city street grid to make way for the new office and retail complex. Since the 2010s, the Toronto Eaton Centre is the most visited tourist attraction in Toronto and the most visited shopping mall in North America.
Large, sprawling retail centres are common in suburban Toronto. Of the more notable such centres isYorkdale Shopping Centre, which opened in 1964 as one of the largest malls in the world. The mall was constructed with a novel system for its retailers to receive merchandise. Most shopping centres have their receiving doors located at the back side, while Yorkdale was constructed with a one-way, two-laned road for trucks running beneath the centre that leads directly to retailers' basement storages. Other large shopping malls in Toronto includeScarborough Town Centre,Fairview Mall, andSherway Gardens.
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario. TheRomanesqueOntario Legislature is one of the most prominent monuments in the city, forming aterminating vista at the end ofUniversity Avenue. To the east of the legislature are a number of governmental buildings, with the best known being theWhitney Block. Constructed over many decades, they embrace a number of different styles. The provincial government have been unwilling to pay for structures as lavish as those of the private sector, and few of the provincial buildings are of much prominence.
Two of the most distinct and well-known structures in downtown Toronto are the old and current city halls. TheOld City Hall was built in 1899 and is a prominent example of the late VictorianRomanesque Revival style. Across the street is the starkly different newToronto City Hall opened in 1965. This brashlymodernist structure was designed by Finnish architectViljo Revell. It frontsNathan Phillips Square, which was also designed by Revell. TheToronto Sign was installed in Nathan Phillips Square for the2015 Pan American Games and a permanent version of the sign was installed in 2020.
TheUniversity of Toronto (U of T) has embraced dramatic design and monumentalism, and its prominent location at the centre of the city has given its structures a wide impact. Built up over almost two centuries, the university's buildings cover a wide range of styles. TheCollegiate Gothic style was embraced for many of the earliest buildings, such asHart House,Trinity College, andBurwash Hall, but there are also examples of almost all the Victorian revival styles on campus. In recent decades, the university has built examples of modernism, such as McLennan Physical Laboratories;brutalism, such asRobarts Library; and postmodernism, such as thegraduate house byPritzker Architecture Prize winnerThom Mayne. SirNorman Foster designed the University of Toronto'sLeslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building, which is home to the largest pharmacy faculty in Canada. It was completed in 2006.
The other two major universities,York University andToronto Metropolitan University (formerly known as Ryerson University until 2022), have largely been built in more recent years and have fewer architectural monuments. Toronto Metropolitan was long mostly hidden within the downtown streetscape, with the Brutalistlibrary, podium, and Jorgensen Hall complex being one half block east of Yonge Street, but since the 1990s, an unprecedented building project has greatly expanded the campus and made it much more visible. York, like many of the universities that largely came into being in the 1950s and 1960s, has mostly eschewed monumentalism in pursuit of less dramatic, but more egalitarian architecture, particularly Brutalist architecture, such as theScott Library.
OCAD University (formerly known as the Ontario College of Art and Design), for many years confined to a series of comparatively unprepossessing buildings in the western part of downtown Toronto, was transformed in 2004 by the addition of theWill Alsop's Sharp Centre of Design. It consists of a black-and-white speckled box suspended four storeys off the ground and supported by a series of multi-coloured pillars at different angles.
Toronto is home to a variety of museums of varied styles. TheHockey Hall of Fame is housed in aBeaux-Arts building designed byFrank Darling that was formerly a branch of theBank of Montreal. Several of Canada's most prominent museums are located in Toronto, and since the late 2000s, have seen a number of architecturally bold expansions. TheGardiner Museum commissionedKPMB Architects for a renovation and expansion, which was completed in 2006. The design consists of strongly pronounced rectangular and square windows, with various asymmetrical setbacks. Opened in 1914, theRoyal Ontario Museum is Canada's largest. In 2007,Daniel Libeskind's expansion arrived, giving the museum a series of enormous "crystals" that rise dramatically five storeys from the street surface. These crystals are named afterMichael Lee-Chin, who funded a significant proportion of the façade.Frank Gehry's redesign of theArt Gallery of Ontario, completed in November 2008, completely altered the museum inside and out. The new front façade of the gallery became an exercise in transparency, with the upper level transformed into a new sculpture court. Other museums include theBata Shoe Museum on the north end of the University of Toronto, and theAga Khan Museum and the originalOntario Science Centre site in theDon Mills area a few kilometres northeast of Downtown Toronto.
One of the most common institutions in Toronto is the large number of churches and other houses of worship. In the 19th and early 20th century, Toronto was home to a wide array of Christian denominations, each of which erected a wide array of churches in what is today central Toronto. Over time, the decrease in population in the core and the move away from mainline denominations has seen many of these churches disappear. Many still remain, and they are some of the more notable buildings in the city. While some very early churches were in theGeorgian style,Gothic Revival became the dominant. Gothic Revival was used for essentially all major Protestant churches in Toronto up until the early 1950s. Roman Catholic churches were also most often Gothic, thoughItalianate andBaroque churches were also erected. The coming of modernism caused churches of all denominations to move away from the Gothic, and embrace modernist architecture with a wide array of designs. These are the typical church style found in the suburbs that were created after the Second World War.
Toronto has hadan important Jewish community since the late 19th century. Originally, several synagogues were erected in the downtown, and a handful survive today. After the Second World War, the Jewish community recentred upon theBathurst Street corridor. During the late 20th century and the early 21st century, a wide number of other religious groups have grown to considerable numbers in Toronto and constructed traditional religious structures in the city. Severalmosques, as well asBuddhist andHindu temples, have been built. One of the most notable is the HinduBAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Toronto, which opened in the northwest of the city in 2007.
Toronto has numerous theatre and sports venues. Many of these theatre and sports venues havenaming rights sold to major corporations.
The city hosts a number of music theatres and venues, most notablyRoy Thomson Hall. Designed by Canadian architectsArthur Erickson and Mathers and Haldenby, the 2630-seat Roy Thomson Hall opened in 1982 as the primary home of theToronto Symphony Orchestra. The previous home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,Massey Hall, is the oldest musical theatre venue in Toronto, and remains in operation today. In June 2006, theFour Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts opened as the new home of theCanadian Opera Company and TheNational Ballet of Canada. Designed byDiamond + Schmitt, the 2,000 seat opera house has a European-style tiered horseshoe-shaped auditorium. It is the first structure in Canada specifically designed to house both opera and ballet with customized acoustics.[14][15] Other musical theatres and concert venues in Toronto include theDanforth Music Hall,The Opera House, theBudweiser Stage (formerly Molson Canadian Amphitheatre, which replaced The Forum), andRogers Stadium.
The city also holds a number of live performance theatres including theRoyal Alexandra Theatre, the oldest live performance theatre in North America. The Royal Alexandra's design was inspired by turn-of-the-centurybeaux-arts architectural styles, typical of British theatres. Other notable live performance venues includeElgin and Winter Garden Theatres,Ed Mirvish Theatre,Randolph Theatre,CAA Theatre,Princess of Wales Theatre, and theMeridian Hall (formerly the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts and the Hummingbird Centre and was opened as O'Keefe Centre).
Toronto is home to several sports venues, most notably theRogers Centre (formerly SkyDome), theScotiabank Arena (formerly Air Canada Centre), andBMO Field, which are all current venues. TheMaple Leaf Gardens is perhaps Toronto's best-known former sporting venue, as it was the home of theToronto Maple Leafs of theNational Hockey League (NHL) for much of said team's history. The Gardens were later converted to agrocery andliquor store for the first two floors, respectively, as well asclothing on the second floor, and its upper floor, a smaller arena, the Mattamy Athletic Centre, for theTMU Bold hockey team ofToronto Metropolitan University (TMU), as well as for basketball matches in the2015 Pan American Games.
Other sports venues in Toronto include theCoca-Cola Coliseum (formerly the Ricoh Coliseum and was opened as the CNE Coliseum),Lamport Stadium, and theSobeys Stadium (formerly Rexall Centre then Aviva Centre).
TheGolden Horseshoe (including Toronto) saw construction of new venues for the 2015 Pan American Games and the2015 Parapan American Games, as well as renovations to existing venues. Permanent venues constructed for the Pan American Games includeToronto Pan Am Sports Centre at theUniversity of Toronto Scarborough and theYork Lions Stadium atYork University.
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Earlysubwaystations in Toronto were utilitarian by design. The stations are typically described as "a series of bathrooms without plumbing", due to the extensive use ofVitrolite tiling for the original stations. Later subway stations were designed by notable architects, particularly with the Spadina section ofLine 1 Yonge–University, as well asLine 4 Sheppard alongthe namesake avenue. The2017 extension of the Spadina section of Line 1 toVaughan Metropolitan Centre has unique architecture as well. The Spadina section later became part of the University section.
Museum station was renovated to resemble that of the Royal Ontario Museum's collection; its renovation was completed in 2008.Dufferin,Union, andPape subway stations were renovated during the mid-2010s to add new artwork and in the case of Union station, a second platform was added as well, though not as aSpanish solution. Many otherstations also have public artworks within them.
The Toronto subway system primarily uses the uniqueToronto Subway typeface for station names.
Completed in 1927,Toronto Union Station is the main passenger railway terminal in the city.
The most prominent landmark in Toronto, and its best-known symbol, is theCN Tower. It was the world's tallest free-standing structure for 31 years from its completion in 1975 untilBurj Khalifa inDubai,United Arab Emirates surpassed it in 2007; it remains the tallest free-standingtower in the Western Hemisphere. The CN Tower is used as an observation tower and a communications tower. Another landmark structure isCasa Loma. Constructed byE. J. Lennox during the early 1910s, it is a Gothic revival-style castle located on Walmer and Davenport roads overlooking the escarpment. It was originally the residence of SirHenry Pellatt, a Canadian financier and soldier. The city later took over the castle when Pellatt could no longer afford to keep it due to being unable to pay the increased property taxes and was forced to leave in 1923. The building presently operates as ahistoric house museum.
ThePrinces' Gates is aneoclassical-styletriumphal arch monumental gateway atExhibition Place. It was built to commemorate the 60th anniversary ofCanadian Confederation and was to be named The Diamond Jubilee of Confederation Gates. The structure's name was changed when it was learned thatEdward, Prince of Wales andPrince George were travelling to Toronto. The princes cut the ribbon on the structure on August 30, 1927. Princes' Gate was designed by local architectural firmChapman and Oxley.
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