METROPOLITAN CENTRAL YMCA

摘要

My first visit to Toronto was in 1972 when, as a young professor, I brought a group of architecture students from sleepy Indiana to progressive Canada, to see "real cities" and bold new works of architecture such as Moshe Safdie's Habitat, Eberhard Zeidler's Ontario Place, John Andrews' Scarborough College, and Diamond and Myers' York Square. On that trip, the students and I stayed at the Young Men's Christian Association on College Street, near Bay. Completed in 1912, it was a no-nonsense structure by Toronto architects Burke Horwood & White. All that solidity came tumbling down in 1985 when the aging Y was demolished to make way for a grandiose Postmodern police headquarters. That same year, the new Metropolitan Central YMCA opened two blocks to the north on Grosvenor Street. Well before the ribbon was cut, it was heralded by Vancouver architect Bruno Freschi as "world-class architecture" when in 1982, he and fellow jurors gave it a Canadian Architect Award of Excellence for its design.