herr2ck: Toronto Trip, pt. 5 - King Street West

August 2025.

Continuing from my previous post on Yonge Street, we’ll jump back a bit to Yonge’s intersection with King Street. This’ll be brief, but it covers some pretty architecturally significant buildings.

One King West (Dominion Bank Building)

1879 Second Empire building that formerly stood on the site. (Wikimedia)

The Dominion Bank was chartered in 1869, and its first location opened on King Street in 1871. With the opening of its first branch a year later, it became the first Canadian bank to have two locations in one city. In 1879, the bank moved to the intersection of King Street and Yonge Street, its current location, into a Second Empire building designed by William Irving.

Historic photo of the existing building. (Wikimedia)

Dominion Bank continued to grow rapidly into the latter half of the 19th century, and in 1914 their second headquarters was completed. This 12-story skyscraper was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Darling and Pearson. They occupied the building until 1955, when they merged with the Bank of Toronto to form the Toronto-Dominion Bank. (Keep reading for the history after 1955…)

This building specifically would still house a branch of TD until 2000. It became part of the One King West residential skyscraper in 2005.

Pretty solid example of a Beaux-Arts skyscraper. The base is a dark gray ashlar with monumental vaulted windows and an entrance portico. The shaft is more subtly detailed with small pilasters and details in the spandrels. Corinthian pilasters and double-height arched windows crown the top.

North facade, with that signature three-part expression:

Detail of the entrance portico, which uses engaged Doric columns and a detailed entablature above:

Canadian Bank of Commerce Building

1895 view of the 1890 building formerly on the site. (Wikimedia)

The Canadian Bank of Commerce was founded in 1867 and originally headquartered at 59 Yonge Street. In 1890, the bank moved to its current site on King Street West into a Romanesque Revival building designed by Richard A. Waite.

Historic photo of the current building. (TorontoJourney416)

As the bank continued to grow in the early 20th century, it commissioned a larger skyscraper designed by associated architects John Pearson (of Toronto firm Darling & Pearson) and New York firm York & Sawyer. This late Beaux-Arts design was completed in 1931 and became the tallest building in the British Empire at 34 stories.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce merged with the Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961 to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), but unlike Toronto Dominion, they still use their original building as headquarters. However, it is now part of a larger complex of International buildings completed in 1972 by Pei Cobb Freed.

I understand the exterior uses Romanesque Revival ornamentation and arches, but the building has a form more typical of Beaux-Arts architecture, and the interior (which I sadly missed) is a recreation of Roman baths.

The massive vaulted portal on King Street:

The bands of ornament are Romanesque, along with the slender columns embedded into the wall. However, the tympanum sculpture is more classical in nature.

One of the smaller vaulted windows, which seems to have its original frosted glass intact:

I liked this streamlined portal on the west facade, a pretty unorthodox move:

Toronto Dominion Centre

The banking hall under construction in 1967. (Toronto Society of Architects)

Remember how I left off halfway through the Dominion Bank Building’s history? Well, here’s where it resumes. The merger of Bank of Toronto and Dominion Bank was completed in 1962, and the bank planned to build a new headquarters building to reflect its influence. Their first choice was Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, who proposed a design with the structure exposed to the elements. The bank asked Bunshaft to reconsider, but he resigned in protest. Local architect John Parkin, who would have worked with Bunshaft, then submitted a proposal for a 100-story tower with a plaza that had a sunken courtyard and banking hall. At this point, one of the advisors suggested Mies van der Rohe, who instantly disliked Parkin’s plan. Mies was technically a consultant on the project, but he was essentially the primary designer, as it is identical to Mies’s other International-style skyscrapers.

1966 view of Bay Street. All of these buildings have been demolished except the Toronto Stock Exchange, the light gray building. (Wikimedia)

The site consists of an entire city block bordered by King Street to the north, Wellington Street to the south, Bay Street to the east, and York Street to the west. Numerous Gilded Age buildings, such as the Rossin House and Bank of Toronto’s old headquarters, were demolished for the project. Despite preservationists’ protests to save these buildings, the developers argued they would not fit in stylistically with the modern complex. Construction began in 1964 and the first completed building was the TD Bank Tower in 1967, which became the tallest building in Canada at 731 feet tall. The banking pavilion and TD North Tower were completed in 1968 and 1969. The Toronto Dominion Centre would be Mies’s last major commission before his death.

The complex was expanded after Mies’s involvement ended. The first new building outside the original three was the TD West Tower on the southwest corner of the site, completed in 1974, and the TD South Tower across Wellington Street was built in 1985. The final Miesian building on the site was 222 Bay Street, which was built around the Toronto Stock Exchange Building and completed in 1992. These were all designed by Bregman + Hamann Architects, who had worked with Mies on the original buildings.

A famous anecdote in the Toronto Dominion Centre’s history is the death of Garry Hoy. Hoy was a lawyer working on the 24th floor of the TD Bank Tower. In front of a group of visiting students, he ran into the glass window in his office to prove that it was unbreakable, a feat he had performed several times before without issue. However, this time the entire window and frame came loose from the building, and Hoy fell to his death.

The Toronto Dominion Centre was designated a heritage building in 2003, and it has since been recognized as a landmark by several other institutions.

I wish I had done these towers a little more justice. Mies is one of the best Modern architects and considered every single detail about his buildings. They characterize common ideals of both his work and Modernism as a whole--monumentality, structural honesty, massing and repetition favored over applied ornamentation, and urban plazas instead of densely packed buildings. I don't necessarily agree with these design choices or think they belong in the urban landscape, but they’re still important to architectural history.

TD North Tower:

These are the ubiquitous black boxes that Mies designed at the end of his career. At the time these buildings were completed, they dominated the skyline and were considered to be very innovative.

One-story, double-height banking hall:

It’s interesting that this is its own module instead of part of a larger building, like a Beaux-Arts banking hall would be. It does look cool, but it seems logistically difficult.

A Miesian building would never incorporate a historic building into itself. There is something almost perverse about this design in the eyes of orthodox Modernism.