Toronto’s not exactly known for its eye-pleasing buildings. Like the protagonists of teen fiction, our landmarks are more beautiful on the inside.
Hence Doors Open Toronto (May 28 and 29), the annual city-wide event that lets you inside buildings that are normally off limits to the public. Here are NOW’s picks for the thresholds worth crossing at this year’s edition.
McLuhan Coach House
To prevent one of the greatest thinkers of all time from leaving the University of Toronto, the school gave him this shack. A gift to Marshall McLuhan in 1963, the building was used as the university’s Centre for Culture and Technology. Plans were drawn up to modernize the “Coach House” to better reflect McLuhan’s ideas, but they were never completed. Modest, but truly a place of influence, it’s being opened up as part of McLuhan100, the centenary celebration of the theorist’s birth.
Native Child and Family Services of Toronto
For a building with a mundane name, the NCFST office boasts a radical design. Modeled after historic aboriginal forms, topping the new four-storey structure is a Healing Lodge that resembles an ancient Anishnaabe sweat lodge. The green roof is planted with cedar, sweet grass, sage, and the “three sisters” of corn, beans and squash, and the interior is patterned after designs from a 19th century Nishnawbe purse. One of the most positive affirmations of modern First Nations culture anywhere in Toronto.
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
A perennial favourite at Doors Open, U of T’s closely guarded collection of 700,000 unique and antique books is on display to the city’s bibliophiles. It’s the only library in the city that has both a Babylonian cuneiform tablet from 1879 BCE and early manuscripts by Margaret Atwood. Don’t sneeze on anything.
Coach House Press
One of only three publishers in Canada that prints and binds its own books, Coach House is located, suitably enough, inside an old coach house on the grounds of U of T. Master printer Stan Bevington will be on hand to demonstrate Coach House’s Heidelberg printing press, which was a bit of an antiquity even before the Kindle and Kobo. Not sure how much longer publishers like this will be around, so this is definitely worth a look.
Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre
It would normally cost you a few hundred bucks a pop to get into this 98-year-old theatre, so the four guided tours happening both days this weekend are a bargain. The Edwardian building, originally designed for silent for films and vaudeville, is now the only double-decker theatre still in operation. Now’s your chance to get a good look at amazing hanging garden ceiling without being distracted by those pesky theatrics onstage.
Toronto Archives
Many journalists will tell you that one of the greatest pleasures of their job is it occasionally takes you to the Toronto archives, a treasure trove of documents dating all the way to the city’s founding days. View archival footage, see the documentary roots of our great city, and staff will even help you research the history of your own house.
The Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario
If you’re looking for some home deco ideas or just want to spend some time in an apartment building that’s far better than yours, this is your chance. New this year to Doors Open, the ARIDO headquarters are located in the Toy Factory Lofts in Liberty Village. The offices are impeccably designed and feature future from internationally renowned design firms. Also on display are 75 years worth of interior design photo archives.
