HomeMy WebLinkAboutWhy-a-treasure-of-a-toronto-school-building-is-headed-for demolition - Globe & Mail - 02/11/2017 - Globe & Mail - 02/11/20172/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
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The roof leaks. The classrooms are too small. A renovation would be tricky and
expensive. But Davisville P.S. is an architectural treasure, writes Alex
BoAkovic, and the school board's decision to tear it down is a bad sign for
Toronto's heritage
ALEX BOOKOVIC
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3 Comments
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A spaceship landed on Millwood Road. That's how an imaginative child might see
Davisville Public School: a pointy -winged product of a distant civilization that loves
syncopated windows and hyperbolic paraboloids.
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
In fact, the North Toronto school is the product of a distant civilization: Ours, in 1962,
when public buildings had real budgets and Toronto's school board believed its
architecture should represent the value of public education.
Now, it's slated to be torn down.
The structure, which houses both Davisville Junior Public School and Spectrum
Alternative Senior School, will be replaced by a new building right next door; the Toronto
District School Board will tear down the old one when construction is finished in 2020, to
make room for a schoolyard and driveway. For the affluent and fast-growing area, this is
a victory. The current school is overcrowded. The new building will be larger, with a
community centre and bigger schoolyard.
But there is also a loss for the city: an unnecessary demolition of a building that has
economic and environmental value, and real cultural worth. "It's a treasure," says
architect Carol Kleinfeldt, one of the leaders of an informal activist group that is agitating
to save the building. "And this is the school board's own heritage."
If the building had been designated heritage by the city, "we would be having a very
different conversation," says Catherine Nasmith of the Architectural Conservancy of
Ontario. But the school board's internal process ignored the building's heritage value and
skipped past the city's heritage -preservation apparatus.
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
budding, whcln its currently overcrowded and outdated.
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Not far up Yonge Street, the sneaky but legal weekend demolition of a 192os bank
building recently prompted an uproar. At Davisville, the City of Toronto, thanks to the
leadership of councillor Josh Matlow, has given the school board the freedom to
disregard heritage that a developer could only dream of.
The story has implications far beyond the neighbourhood. The TDSB runs 584 schools, in
nearly as many buildings, across the city. These are places of importance in the culture of
Toronto, but what will their future be? As community assets, perhaps like the Artscape
Youngplace facility in a former school near Queen Street West? Or as piles of rubble?
With enrolment far below its baby -boom heights, the financially strapped TDSB is under
pressure from the province to close or consolidate its facilities, leaving aging
buildings vulnerable.
And though the TDSB is funded by the government of Ontario, which oversees
architectural heritage and has a strict heritage -review process for its own buildings, the
board has no mandate to protect its buildings and has no strategy to do so.
At Davisville, Ms. Kleinfeldt and some colleagues, allied with Ms. Nasmith, argue that it
would be possible to retain the building, as a private school or for other purposes, while
also building classroom space and a community centre.
Why bother? Because Davisville is a fascinating building of real importance to the city.
That was the assessment of city staff, who wrote a persuasive report last year, and the
Toronto Preservation Board, which voted unanimously to recommend it for designation
under the Ontario Heritage Act. "We believe, through research and evaluation, that it's
exceptionally valuable," says Mary MacDonald, manager of Heritage Preservation
Services at the city's planning department.
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
The school, though little-known, is a high point of school architecture in the postwar
period in Canada. It was designed by the Toronto Board of Education's own architects
under F.C. Etherington, and reflects high-quality construction and innovation. The
design architect was the Manchester -born Peter Pennington, who brought a distinctive
and very English brand of modernism to new schools while working for the board from
1957 to 1962.
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F:fRf::i:D I UM/ rHEE GI AND MAI I...
"We hoped that by creating a school of unconventional shape," Mr. Pennington wrote in
Canadian Art magazine in 1962, "and using bright colours and appointments with a
certain flair, that we might stimulate the children — and the school staff as well." In that
essay he was talking about Lord Lansdowne P.S., opened in 1961 near College and
Spadina — a building where most of the classrooms are in an octagonal tower surrounded
by angled steel stilts and capped by a rainbow -striped chimney stack.
This goes against the conventions of postwar school design — the rational, squared -off,
brick -and -terrazzo boxes that formed so many young minds. And it was this radical
thinking that drove the design of the Davisville/Spectrum building. It's divided into four
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
wings, each of them roughly square, and topped with roofs that slope in different
directions like variously folded origami. It was created to house two schools, one of them
the Metropolitan Toronto School for the Deaf. Each school got two small "houses," as Ms.
Nasmith puts it, "that were meant to divide the school into units that were smaller and
friendlier to kids."
Ms. Nasmith is allied with the group of critics, who half -jokingly call themselves "the
Mod Squad," who have come together to defend the building. Along with Ms. Kleinfeldt
and her partner Roman Mychajlowycz, they include architect Kim Storey, green -building
advocate Lloyd Alter, marketer and blogger Robert Moffatt and George Brown College
instructors Luigi Ferrara and Monica Contreras. They stepped forward at the end of 2015
when they got wind of the building's impending demolition and have tried to engage with
the school board in an effort that has so far gotten absolutely nowhere.
When asked about their criticisms, local school trustee Shelley Laskin is audibly
frustrated. They got involved late, she argues, after a school -board consultation process
in the neighbourhood was well -advanced — though that process never consulted city
heritage staff or heritage architects. Further, their arguments are "completely
unrealistic," Ms. Laskin says. "We knew from the get -go that the school, in order to
increase capacity, had to be rebuilt."
Ms. Laskin and board staff argue that the provincial Ministry of Education won't pay for a
rebuild. The existing school would need a complete refit in order to meet current
guidelines. The gym is on the second floor, meaning a new combined school and city gym
will be difficult to achieve. And the former Metro Toronto School for the Deaf classrooms
are too small to meet current requirements, requiring a major renovation. "The cost
would far exceed a new build," Ms. Laskin says, "and that's why the province is giving us
money for a new build. Those are the realities we live by."
Ironically, the province has a rigorous process of evaluating heritage for its own
buildings. Yet when it comes to schools, "the province leaves decisions about school
closures and construction to local boards," spokeswoman Heather Irwin explained by e-
mail, "[and] will consider additional funding for projects if there are unique costs, such as
retaining heritage -designated features." She noted that in the case of Davisville, the TDSB
only applied for a replacement school.
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
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But that does not mean a full restoration or renovation. "In general," board spokesman
Ryan Bird says, "the ministry tends to favour a complete rebuild of a school over a project
of extensive renovations, in order to have more control over construction costs and to
lower operating costs in the long run." Witness the case of Nelson Mandela Park Public
School, where the board retrofitted a 1917 building in a complex project that went far late
and over budget — and which prompted Queen's Park to temporarily freeze funding for
TDSB capital projects. "In the end," Mr. Bird says, "it is simply not possible, given the
extent of our backlog and our capital needs, that the province would provide millions of
dollars above what is necessary to rebuild a new school."
There's no question that renovation is generally more expensive than new construction.
The Ministry of Education is providing $14.9 -million for the new school, which will make
for a mean building. The architects, Snyder, are experienced, though not distinguished as
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
designers. Will the new building be great? "I think," Ms. Laskin says, "it will be the
absolute best we can do."
In this context, the critics ask: What if the original building could be renovated and
reused — even leased out to generate a financial return? What if its craft and personality
could be revamped or find a new purpose? Ms. Kleinfeldt and Mr. Mychajlowycz, whose
architecture firm KMA specializes in courthouses and fire halls, argue that this is entirely
possible. "We've done a lot of studies for various public clients about whether a particular
facility is capable of taking a renovation, or they're past that point," Ms. Kleinfeldt says.
"This particular building is not even close. It's in very good shape." This is where the
cultural value of a building comes up against a technical assessment of its condition and
potential. Both can be highly debatable.
Last May, when the preservation board recommended the building be designated, local
city councillor Josh Matlow led votes at Toronto East York Community Council and City
Council to defer that staff report — indefinitely stalling preservation efforts and in effect
dooming the building. Mr. Matlow, who calls himself "an ardent defender of heritage,"
argues that he was trying to make sure the board didn't miss an opportunity for
provincial funding "and wind up with nothing." And, he says, "I understood from the
school board that the building is in terrible condition."
The details get technical; in short, everyone agrees that the school badly needs updates,
but there's profound disagreement on the idea that the building must be junked. And
that, to the Mod Squad, is the problem. Rather than protect the building and ask the
school board to deal with the heritage aspects, the city accepted the board's assessment
that this was impossible. And with the TDSB, "from the beginning, there was an
assumption that the building was of no cultural value," Ms. Nasmith says.
Meanwhile, parents see the school through the lens of decades of poor maintenance.
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
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"Among the things that are hard to love," Davisville P.S. parents' council member Chris
Thompson says, "the roof is somewhat falling apart ... my daughter was on the third floor
this year, and they had buckets on the floor in her classroom because the roof was leaking
through into the classroom." According to Ms. Laskin, this is because of the unusual roof
shape: "The building is impossible to roof."
To anyone familiar with heritage -preservation debates, especially around modern
buildings, this will elicit a grim smile. The issue is absolutely typical, especially for
buildings that are around 50 years old: They are beginning to crumble, especially if they
haven't been well-maintained, but they're not old enough to fit many people's idea of
what is historic.
And in this case people's minds are made up. "It's harder to change a plan when it's
fixed," Ms. MacDonald says. "Understanding heritage value from the beginning means
you can make certain choices and ask for forgiveness on certain requirements."
For instance: The new Davisville school will have about two acres (o.8 hectares) of open
space for its 70o -odd students — something near the 2.5 acres (one hectare) that ministry
guidelines suggest. Is it realistic to assume that amount of space in central Toronto, just
as you would in Milton or Timmins? It will include 161000 square feet of parking lot,
drop-off and service area. The school's footprint is also larger than in a 2012 proposal for
the same site. In short, the plan is full of all sorts of flab that a motivated architect could
chop away.
Two schemes, drawn pro bono by Kleinfeldt Mychajlowycz suggest how the school and
community centre might be added to the site while retaining much of the
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
existing building.
"The plans..., while provocative, are not representative of what is actually needed by the
TDSB and its city partner on the Davisville/Spectrum property," Ms. Laskin says.
But the discussion shouldn't end there. The Ministry of Education's formulas shouldn't
shape the future of the city. Instead, the board and heritage architects should look at
those Soo buildings as community assets, and not just obstacles. If a public agency won't
try to preserve its built heritage, who will? And what will we save, if not a spacecraft from
the sixties?
THE PROPOSALS
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2/13/2017 Why a `treasure' of a Toronto school building is headed for demolition -The Globe and Mail
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