Toronto-Dominion Centre

The Toronto-Dominion Centre.

The Toronto-Dominion Centre is a large cluster of buildings in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is home to the Toronto-Dominion Bank, as well as many other businesses. 21,000 people work in the complex, making it the largest in Canada.

Frequently referred to as the TD Centre, it consists of six towers, covered in bronze-tinted glass and black painted steel. The complex was the inspiration of Allen Lambert (1911-2002), former President and Chairman of the Board of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, with Phyllis Lambert recommending Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as the project architect.

Design

The complex, designed by Mies van der Rohe in consultation with the local Toronto firms of John B. Parkin and Associates and Bregman + Hamann Architects, originally consisted of two towers and the banking pavilion. Though the official opening was in 1967, the first structure to be completed was the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower in that year. At 222.8 metres tall, it was at the time the tallest building in Canada, and remains the fifth-largest building in Toronto. The completion of the Banking Pavilion and the Royal Trust Tower followed, the former in 1968 and the latter in 1969. It is stated that the original buildings of the Toronto-Dominion Centre are the finest corporate towers created by Mies van der Rohe as he died in 1969, before their completion, making them the last, and therefore most refined, of his development of this building type since the Seagram Building in New York City (completed 1958).

Mies van der Rohe arranged the three structures on a granite plinth (a common tactic for most of his later urban projects), with the Banking Pavilion anchoring the site at the corner of King and Bay Streets. The Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower sat to the south on Wellington Street, and the Royal Trust tower closed off the north-west boundary. The buildings are confined to a rigid structural grid set out across the plinth's top, and each is offset to the one next to them by exactly one bay of the grid, allowing views to 'slide' open or closed as one moves through the site. On the north side, within the space created by the situation of the towers and pavilion, a large granite plaza provided a formal entry to the complex. In 2004 this courtyard was named Oscar Peterson Square. Blurring the distinction between interior and exterior, the granite surface of the plaza extends through the glass lobbies of the towers and through the Banking Pavilion. On the south, cornered by the Toronto-Dominion and Royal Trust Towers, was a large lawn. These were the first examples of public outdoor space within the urban core of Toronto. They, combined with the slightly later Nathan Phillips Square, proved to be very successful and welcome outdoor areas for downtown Torontonians to gather.

Interiors

The two storey Banking Pavilion has a roof comprised of steel I-sections, each huge beam being supported on only one steel column at each end. However, these beams are arranged in a grid, creating a waffle-grid ceiling and a row of corresponding columns around the periphery. This allows for one vast, column-free space within. The structure was a further development of the Post Office pavilion of the Federal Centre in Chicago, which had less expressed columns and a second level balcony, and a precursor to the Neue Nationalgalerie completed in Berlin in 1968, which had a similar roof supported on only eight large steel columns. Smaller areas inside the Pavilion are cordoned off using counters and cabinets as partitions, all built with the typical rich materials of Mies' palette - marble, woods, and granite.

The newspaper The Globe and Mail stated about the Banking Pavilion:

"The two-storey banking hall in the plaza is among the best spaces Mies ever made. As you are visiting the branch you will find yellow flowers in a fishbowl vase on the service counters just where Mies had put them."

(from Globe and Mail, November 4, 2002)

Amenities

Incorporated into the lower levels of the project is a large underground shopping mall. Fitted in the same black aluminum and travertine marble as the main lobbies above, this mall was the genesis of Toronto's PATH system, which now consists of 27 kilometers of underground shopping and passages. Also extending to this area was Mies van der Rohe's strict design sense. To maintain the clean-lined and ordered aesthetic of the environment, Mies stipulated, with the backing of Phyllis Lambert and Alan Lamport, that store fronts must consist only of the glass panels and black aluminum that he specified. Even signage was restricted to only white back-lit letters within a black aluminum panel, and only in the specific font that Mies had designed for the T-D Centre. Renovations to the underground mall, beginning in the late 1990s, have caused some controversy within the Toronto architectural community as the building management, under pressure from their tenants who wish to have greater visibility to increase business, have let the strict design guidelines slip and more and more individual signage has appeared throughout the mall. As well, ceilings have been renovated from the original flat drywall planes with recessed pot-lights to coffered ceilings.

A 660 seat movie theatre was originally included within the underground mall, but, though the space still exists, it was closed in 1978 due to it becoming too small and technologically out-of-date compared to newer theatres opening throughout the city. (See The Cinema At The Toronto Dominion Centre)

At the opposite end of the site, the top-most accessible floor of the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower was a large indoor observation platform, which, as the tower was the largest in the city by far, allowed uninterrupted views of the then quickly developing city and Lake Ontario to the south. One level below was a restaurant on the south side, and the Toronto-Dominion Bank corporate offices and boardroom on the north. The interiors of the corporate area were also designed by Mies van der Rohe, and included his signature broad planes of unadorned but rich wood paneling, freestanding cabinets as partitions, wood slab desks, and some of his furniture pieces including the Barcelona chair, Barcelona ottoman, and Brno Chair. Within the main board room, at the north-east corner of the floor-plate, service areas are concealed within the wood paneled walls behind 'secret panels.' While the Toronto-Dominion corporate offices and boardroom exist in their original form today, and the restaurant and bar (though with different tenants and decor) is still in place, the observation platform has become leased office space.

The towers

1. Toronto-Dominon Bank Tower - 66 Wellington Street W

Built in 1967 and stands at 56 floors. It was the first tower to be built in the complex by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bregman + Hamann Architects, John B. Parkin Associates.

2. Royal Trust Tower - 77 King Street West

Built in 1969 and stands at 46 floors. It was also built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bregman + Hamann Architects, John B. Parkin Associates.

3. Canadian Pacific Tower - 100 Wellington Street West

Built in 1974 and stands at 32 floors. Formerly called the Commercial Union Tower, it was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

4. TD Waterhouse Tower - 79 Wellington Street West

Built in 1985 and stands at 36 floors. Formerly called Aetna Tower and Maritime Life Tower. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Bregman + Hamann Architects.

5. Ernst & Young Tower - 222 Bay Street

Built in 1991 and stands at 31 floors. Designed by Bregman + Hamann Architectsand Scott Tan de Bibiana. This build is somewhat of a deviation from Mies van der Rohe's original design. Incorporates the old Toronto Stock Exchange building - now the Design Exchange. That original Art Deco building, including the facade, is preserved within the base of the larger tower above.

6. 220 Bay Street

Built in 1995 and stands at 15 floors. Designed by Page and Steele Inc., this is the only building not consistent with the rest of the complex.

7 95 Wellington Street West

Built in 1986 and stands 22 floors. In 1998, 95 Wellington Street was purchased and incorporated into the Toronto-Dominion Centre, but is not coherent with the Mies van der Rohe aesthetic of the rest of the development.

A scaled-down version of the first tower's design was used for the TD Tower (South), built in Calgary in 1976.

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