{"id":774372,"date":"2026-07-02T00:26:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T00:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/774372\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T00:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T00:26:17","slug":"a-dig-through-the-architectural-history-of-torontos-cn-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/774372\/","title":{"rendered":"A dig through the architectural history of Toronto\u2019s CN Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The CN Tower in Toronto celebrated its 50th birthday last week.Tom Arban\/Tom Arban Photography<\/p>\n

In my mind, it was a sunny, warm day when my oldest brother organized a family trip to the relatively new Harbourfront Centre to add our autographs to the 32-foot-long, final steel tip of the CN Tower. But, checking the newspapers, I realize it was a blustery, cold, day in late March of 1975, and Michael Hanlon, writing in the Toronto Star on the final day that piece of antenna was exhibited \u2013 and after it collected 7,000 signatures \u2013 wrote that winds and flurries had \u201cdelayed installation of the section of the mast that would have taken CN Tower higher than the 1,748-foot Ostankino tower in Moscow and made it the tallest in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

When The Globe and Mail reporter Peter Whelan wrote on April 3 that the last \u201csteel finger\u201d had cemented the CN Tower\u2019s place in the Guinness Book of World Records at 1,815-feet (and five inches), I\u2019m sure that whatever the weather, there was sunshine exploding in my six-year-old brain.<\/p>\n

Even then, I was a proud Torontonian. When the CN Tower opened to the public on June 26, 1976, my parents, fearing large crowds, had to calm their little, vibrating eight-year-old as they explained that we\u2019d all go up the next day. As Mark Myers\u2019s film The Tower That Built a City points out, 1976 was significant for another reason: the census revealed that Toronto had finally bested Montreal to become the largest city in Canada. And I remember doing a little jig at the news: the tallest thing in the world and the biggest city in the country? <\/p>\n

So, excuse me for geeking out as architect Richard Myers unrolls a yellowed, highly detailed drawing of the first, unbuilt design \u2013 three metal sticks of varying heights that hold a flying saucer aloft near the top \u2013 and then another, more wiggly sketch of it, and the surrounding, proposed Metro Centre development, by Australian architect John Andrews (1933-2022), who first came to Toronto after entering the competition to design New City Hall in 1958.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like some kind of Star Wars [building],\u201d Mr. Myers says with a laugh. \u201cThis is all ink on Mylar back then \u2026 but I\u2019ve got some really cool stuff in that box.\u201d <\/p>\n

Born in 1973, Mr. Myers may not have been vibrating in June, 1976, but as WZMH Architect\u2019s \u201cunofficial archivist,\u201d he\u2019s just as excited to dig into Toronto\u2019s architectural history, especially since Webb Zerafa Menk\u00e8s Housden and John Andrews were architects-of-record for the CN Tower, which celebrated its 50th birthday last week.<\/p>\n

Sitting in a boardroom named after Ren\u00e9 Menk\u00e8s (1932-2019), I am given a tactile history lesson like no other. Some things I already know, such as the grand scheme that started it all in 1968, which would have seen a huge swath of the railway lands filled with zigging and zagging office and residential towers, a new Union Station (and demolition of the old one!), and that three-legged, non-world\u2019s-tallest tower. But other things are completely new to me, such as the world-postcard-tour. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a holy s**t moment,\u201d says Mr. Myers, as he spreads a half-dozen postcards onto the table. \u201cThese are postcards that the architect joint venture team sent [to the Metro Centre office at 3 Church St.]. \u2026 They\u2019re travelling around the world looking at different examples of towers built, and they didn\u2019t have e-mail of course, so they\u2019re saying \u2018this looks great at night, this has windows that are difficult to clean, the concrete is aging or stained.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I pick one up: it depicts the 619-foot-tall, 1964 G.P.O. Tower in London, England (now BT Tower). Written on the back: \u201cOur proposed erection is far superior to what I managed to see of this one. Due to the actions of some IRA gentlemen, this tower is closed down for a year of \u2018maintenance\u2019 operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CN Tower is turning 50. Test your knowledge of 50 fun facts with our quiz<\/a><\/p>\n

The most interesting thing I learn, however, is that the author of the CN Tower\u2019s final form \u2013 something encoded into the DNA of every Torontonian aged 60-and-under \u2013 is impossible to credit. The issue is addressed in Mr. Myers\u2019s film as well (no relation to WZMH principal Richard Myers), since it\u2019s nice shorthand to give credit to just one person. But with an engineering and architectural marvel such as this, it\u2019s just not possible. In the film, architect Ned Baldwin (also on the project) suggests the idea to take the independent trio of legs \u2013 deemed too expensive to build just before the trigger was pulled \u2013 and join them together as a singular, tapering concrete form should go to structural engineer Dr. Franz Knoll \u2013 however, project director Stewart (Bud) Andrews is shown claiming he had drawn this on a napkin and handed it to Dr. Knoll.<\/p>\n

Almost as interesting is a 1972 York University faculty of environmental studies document that Mr. Myers produces: it details ways to combat elevator sickness (black horizontal bars in the elevator shaft glass and handing out chewing gum) to what folks on the ground might experience by, says Mr. Myers, \u201cwalking in a city where there\u2019s this thing taller than anything that\u2019s ever been built by humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Down in the WZMH\u2019s \u201ctube storage room,\u201d Mr. Myers shows me what he deals with whenever a significant architectural anniversary comes up (for instance, WZMH\u2019s Royal Bank Plaza is also celebrating its 50th this year). Like a modern-day Indiana Jones, he digs, flashlight in hand, through drawings that date from 1961, when the firm regrouped after the untimely death of founder Peter Dickinson.<\/p>\n

But, ultimately, his love of history always pushes him past the cobwebs: \u201cI\u2019m a bit of a history nerd,\u201d he finishes. \u201cI want to do something more for the legacy of the firm, because I think, right now, we\u2019re [in] the top three oldest practising architecture firms in Canada; everyone else has gotten bought out, phased out, fizzled away.\u201d<\/p>\n

With luck and continued good work, WZMH and its incredible stories will stand as long as the CN Tower. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The CN Tower in Toronto celebrated its 50th birthday last week.Tom Arban\/Tom Arban…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[967,76,354,355,49,48,356,75,968],"class_list":["post-774372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-architourist","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}