With the advent of the age of rail, Toronto temporarily lost its battle for a refined waterfront to the forces of heavy industry. Gone were the city’s early 19th century plans for a green promenade, “the Esplanade” on the water’s edge, replaced, by rail spurs, warehouses, roundhouses, marine terminals, industrial slips, and in the 1950s, an elevated highway. In the 1970s the tides turned: 1972 saw the creation of a crown corporation that was handed some harbourfront lands by the federal government and charged with the mandate to develop an urban, waterfront park. In this public development, housing was a minor feature, appearing only in the conversion of the Queens Quay terminal to a mixed use of shops, offices, and four stories of luxury condominiums – a project by Zeidler Roberts Associates.

The first significant injection of housing into the central waterfront came not from the public, but from the private sector. The best model of urban waterfront development creates a significant and continuous public space along the water’s edge separated from private development by a public street. Ruefully, developers and their architects erected a wall of buildings around the foot of Bay Street, beginning with the Harbour Square condominiums and Harbour Castle Hotel in the early 1970s and culminating with One York Quay by Clarke, Dowling and Downey Architects on the York Street Slip in the 1980s. The Harbour Square development between the York and Yonge Street slips was constructed directly on the water, on the south side of Queens Quay. Buried behind this wall of buildings and invisible from Queens Quay is the Toronto Island Ferry Terminal, from where over a million people begin their visits to the Toronto Islands every year. In addition to the Islands’ visitors, a resilient community of about 450 people who live on the Islands use the Ferry Terminal regularly.

Subsequent housing achievements on the Harbourfront between the Spadina and Jarvis Street slips are, with few exceptions, dubious. The three-tower apartment complex constructed at 250–70 Queens Quay (north side) is affectionately known as the “three ugly sisters.” Not to be outdone, due west from the sisters, at 350–390 Queens Quay, are a pair of residential towers that have earned themselves the moniker, the “two ugly brothers.” Between these two complexes sits a vacant site, 316 Queens Quay, which is owned by the City of Toronto and is due to be developed into a public park. One past housing project with a built form that is more sensitive to its waterfront location is Harbour Terrace at 401 Queens Quay (designed by Daniel Li Architect). Though it sits, like the Harbour Square buildings, on the “wrong” side of Queens Quay, the scale and treatment of the building make for a less obstructive presence on the water’s edge.

There has been some success recently in the generation of new public space. The publicly owned Harbourfront Centre controls 10 acres of public space and facilities. Public transit secured a firm foothold in the area with the introduction of the Queens Quay LRT in about 1990. This important link to Union Station and the subway now includes a connection to the Spadina LRT, and soon to Bathurst Street, Ontario Place and the Exhibition grounds. Yet, the Achilles heel of the area remains the lack of a generous, continuous pedestrian connection along either the water’s edge or along Queens Quay, whose streetscape quality is inconsistent. Establishing and improving connections in the public realm are essential if the visitor’s experience to the central waterfront is to have some coherence.

New residential projects include, at time of writing, proposals for 200 and 226–230 Queens Quay by Kirkor Architects. Like their predecessors, the designers will have the task of creating buildings that are both open and oriented to the streets and waterfront, and city views to the north, but suitably protected from the noise and pollution of the Gardiner Expressway. In addition, a new condominium designed by Graziani and Corazza Architects is due to replace a modernist building at the northeast corner of Spadina Avenue and Queens Quay. Giving these projects names like “The Riviera,” and “Aqua,” and offering an amalgam of worldwide waterfront architectural styles the developers hope to capitalize on the attraction of waterfront living, albeit on a waterfront that is neither the temperate Mediterranean or Floridian scene such names or architectures attempt to evoke. The new developments east of Spadina Quay bear testament to the continued segregation in Toronto of private and affordable housing. Affordable housing on the waterfront has long been relegated to the Bathurst Quay at the foot of Bathurst Street.

Lewis Poplak