The Toronto intersection of Yonge and Queen never stays the same for long. At the chaotic heart of Canada’s largest city, change — more specifically, construction — is a constant. For almost two years, the corner has been partially closed to traffic, with Queen Street on either side of Yonge under wraps to accommodate below-grade work on the future Ontario Line subway. And with (at least) another two years of high-profile road closures to go, the site will remain a civic pain point for the foreseeable future. It’s a harried context that makes the revitalized heritage building at 2 Queen Street West easy to miss. But even amidst the urban bustle, it’s worth slowing down and looking up.
Clad in pristine buff masonry and terracotta and gracefully accented by cornices and inset gold-leaf lettering, the elegantly rounded, four-storey corner building is topped by a sleek glass extension, one that translates the curved form below into the 21st century. But while the composition reads as a turn-of-the century heritage building with a contemporary addition, the whole of the 2 Queen Street West complex is — in a sense — almost entirely new.
At once a heritage restoration and a new build, 2 Queen Street West is an unconventional intervention. Led by venerable local heritage specialists ERA Architects in collaboration with Zeidler, the project replicates a building that stood on the site since the late 19th century, but was effectively obliterated by waves of adaptation and retrofit over the next century. Originally constructed for men’s clothier Philip E. Jamieson in 1895 — and designed by architects Samuel Curry and Francis S. Baker — the Renaissance Revival storefront was a local icon, one immediately recognizable as one of the city’s few curved buildings.
Over the coming decades, however, the rise of sprawling urban department stores shifted the retail landscape. The three-storey shop soon had retail giants Eaton’s and Simpson’s for its immediate neighbours, with the building — expanded via a second building added to its north face — becoming a flagship Woolworth’s location, which occupied the site from 1913 until the 1960s. On the ground floor, a bustling lunch counter met the public realm.
“I still remember the Woolworth’s lunch counter from when I was a kid,” says ERA’s Annabel Vaughan who led the heritage restoration with Philip Evans. “I remember coming up from the subway with my parents and stepping into this busy urban milieu.” And as Woolworth’s staked a prominent presence as a retailer, the building’s frontage was heavily — and heavy-handedly — adapted. Painted white and covered with a metal screen, the intricately detailed frontage was replaced with a simpler and much larger pattern more visible to motorists.
Throughout the next two decades, the building’s fortunes continued to turn. By the time architect Lloyd Alter won the job to re-clad the structure in the late 1980s, its original brick and terracotta facade was all but forgotten. “Other architects proposed changing the metal for mirrored glass, but I found archival photos showing two separate buildings underneath the skin,” writes Alter in Carbon Upfront. “I wanted to ‘peel back the cladding like unwrapping a present’ and open up the corner.”
The result was the building as I remember it from my youth. In an effort to preserve as much of original facade as possible, Alter exposed part of the preserved facade while covering the sides of the building in a greenish-gray metal — a period Vaughan lovingly refers to as the building’s “Robocop” era. Outdoor supply store Atmosphere occupied the lower levels. For his part, Alter recalls being “in way over [his] head,” with the frustration surrounding the project contributing to his retirement from architectural practice. “By the time this was all done, the market had turned, everyone ran out of money, and I was completely burned out.”
Vaughan has a more sympathetic perspective. “Everything Lloyd did reflected the best practices and the progressive thinking of the time, he was really trying to preserve as much of the building as he could,” she says. Nonetheless, the writing was always on the wall. “From day one, the building was sort of fighting itself,” says Vaughan. While alterations continuously compromised the facade’s integrity, the original 1985 terracotta — which was of poor quality — began peeling off the structure before the turn of the 20th century.
At the turn of the new millennium, the place was a lone holdout. Flanked by the Eaton Centre and the flagship Hudson’s Bay store (formerly Simpson’s), the complex was finally sold to Eaton Centre owners Cadillac Fairview in 2012. While the developers initially explored a high-rise plan for the site, the logistical and regulatory complexity of building a tower on the tight lot shelved the concept in favour of a more modestly scaled restoration and expansion.
When ERA and Zeidler began work in 2018, there was little salvageable trace of the original structure. Today, only a few curved window panes and a partial wall remain — everything else was built from scratch. In fact, a single photograph of the site from 1897 provided the sole evidence of the building’s original appearance, with layers upon layers of renovation leaving almost no trace of the 19th century. “I like to say this building’s had more costume changes than Taylor Swift,” says Evans.
While the photograph offered a blueprint for the signage and decoration, samples of original brick and terracotta were meticulously matched with contemporary analogues — and traditional crafts. According to Cadillac Fairview’s David Stewart, the emphasis on finishes and accents upended the developer pro forma. “We like to say construction contracts are about fifty-fifty: 50 per cent material, 50 per cent labour,” Stewart told the Globe and Mail. “This is absolutely flipped, this is 75 per cent labour, 25 per cent material because it is bespoke.” From the signage reading “P Jamieson Clothier Outfitter” to the hand-carved triangular bricks along the arched windows, the result is as much a revival of 19th century artisans as Renaissance Revival aesthetics.
Even without tenants, the place exudes a welcoming urban presence. A welcome reprieve from the drive-by metal billboard of the Woolworth’s era, the elegantly detailed and intricately textured heritage facade is best appreciated from a human scale and a walking pace. It has a tactile, fine-grained bearing. While the ground floor is hopefully set to welcome a retailer, the upper stories will be given over to offices. Meanwhile, Zeidler’s three-storey glass addition is designed to accommodate both workplaces and a marquee restaurant, complete with a spectacular terrace overlooking the city’s Yonge Street spine. At night, understated yet eye-catching lighting draws the eye, highlighting the fine architectural details.
After so many awkward decades, the restoration deftly revives a Victorian frontage and a pedestrian-oriented urban texture. Even so, something was lost. Much as I admire the work, I find myself oddly nostalgic for a weird little building that spent most of its life as urban oddball — a bastard child of clumsy 20th century city-building. Although neither the “Robocop” face nor the Woolworth’s cladding were worth preserving, they collectively defined the place for the better part of a century. Even restoration entails its own sort of erasure.
Still, I’m glad to see it. For now, 2 Queen Street West awaits the retailers, restaurateurs and office workers that will properly bring it back to life. There’s plenty reason to be optimistic. But however it all goes, the corner of Yonge and Queen keeps on evolving. As Ontario Line construction continues, even the stalwart and iconic Hudson’s Bay flagship — itself once the Simpson’s store — now faces an uncertain future amid bankruptcy proceedings.
In the meantime, nearby pockets of Yonge Street are gradually being restored to their erstwhile lustre. A block to the south, the Dineen building was revived over a decade ago with a similarly loving touch, while the adjacent Elgin Block was reconstructed by ERA as part of the Bay Adelaide office development. The original 1850 Elgin Block facade was ingeniously stretched further south via the insertion of a nearly identical — yet very conspicuously modern — concrete “ghost wall.” Several blocks north, ERA more recently rebuilt a Victorian clocktower at 480 Yonge Street, pairing the 19th century restoration with an homage to the site’s queer history. What’s more, the site’s long-demolished firehouse has been revived in an etched glass facade which hints at history without imitating it.
As remarkable — and welcome — as the restoration of 2 Queen Street West has proven, the complex layering of histories at the Elgin Block and 480 Yonge Street arguably tells an even richer story. Here, meticulous restorations of the past are paired with post-modern reminders that preservation is itself a product of the 21st century. That it wasn’t always this pretty. That the past, whatever it really is, is always changing too.
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