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	Church & Wellesley: Photos
	City Park and its neighbours / Appx 530 words / 3 images / 85 K total

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View along Wood Street
Right to left: 484 Church; 51 Alexander;
31 Alexander (in shade)
Structure to the far left: Maple Leaf Gardens

City Park
and its neighbours

The City Park Apartments were the first modern highrise residences in downtown Toronto. Designed by Peter Caspari and built by European developers in 1954, their clean lines and spacious units (375 fewer than allowed on the site by city zoning) made them from the start a classy -- and soon quite gay -- address.

The project shares the block bounded by Wood, Yonge, Alexander, and Church Streets with only one other occupant, facing Yonge: a hotel built in 1956 as the Torontonian, later the Westbury (and now a Howard Johnson's). It, too, is a classic of '50s International Style modernism, designed the city's master of the genre, Peter Dickinson.

The Westbury's Red Lion Bar became popularly known by the early '60s as the "Pink Pussy" -- fitting neighbour to "The Queens' Palaces." City Park is now a co-operative with many gay members, its balconies fabulously festooned on Pride Day.

Queens' Palace; Jock Heaven
Backsides of 484 Church and Maple Leaf Gardens

Juxtaposed (both culturally and stylistically) with City Park is that famous shrine of Canadian hockey, Maple Leaf Gardens. It was built in just five months and 12 days, by hardhats working around the clock to meet deadline for the 1931 season. The speed didn't preclude some fine Art Deco details on what might have been just a big yellow- brick box.

For the past few years, Maple Leaf Gardens has had at least one annual gay moment: a service by the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, on the morning of Pride Day.

The future of the Gardens is uncertain. The Leafs are looking for a new home; wrestling and rock concerts may not be enough to keep this grand old barn standing on its prime piece of downtown real estate.

Newer neighbours
Left to right: Carlton Court (33 Wood);
The Maples (north tower, 25 Wood);
City Park's 31 Alexander Street tower

The three parallel slabs of City Park are set about 200 feet apart, with green spaces and some parking in between. This opens views to the north from Wood Street -- at least as far as the Village Green's two 18-storey slabs, just north of Alexander.

But many tenants of these two Wood Street towers, built just west of Maple Leaf Gardens in the '70s, must have no problem with the view: at 26 and 30 floors, they are among the tallest apartment buildings in the tract. Sitting at its south end, they offer a vista to its northern boundaries and beyond.

The orange construction fences here are not part of City Park's usual landscape. Major (and very noisy) work is underway to repair the crumbling concrete of the buildings' balconies. Forty- three years have taken their toll -- though they haven't robbed City Park of its quintessential modernity.

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Time & Place: Toronto, 1971 / More on Church & Wellesley