Sunday, June 21, 2009

former Postal Delivery Building, Toronto - Part I

Air Canada Centre, TorontoIn the early 1990s, the former Postal Delivery Building in Toronto was earmarked for demolition but somewhere along the line the south and east walls were retained and incorporated into the Air Canada Centre, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs Ice Hockey team, Toronto Raptors Basketball team and Toronto Rock Lacrosse team.

The Postal Delivery Building was commissioned by the Public Works Department in 1938 and the design by Charles Brommall Dolphin was completed between 1939 and 1941.

former Postal Delivery Building, Toronto

With the development of the sports centre around the older building, the original footprint has been respected and maintained to some extent. A display on the wall inside the new centre provides a history of the building including some elements that had to be removed when the rest of the building had been demolished.

On display is the metalwork from above the original employees entrance which incorporates a dolphin in reference to the architect.

Beavers & Maple Leafs, Toronto

The former Postal Delivery Building retains a lot of the original decoration including a frieze of beavers and maple leafs (leaves) around the roofline.

There are several rondels featuring either Canadian Geese

Geese, Toronto

or a Moose.

Moose, Toronto

However, the best part of the building is the series of reliefs at street level depicting the history of human communication but I'll leave those to Part II of this post.

former Postal Delivery Building, Toronto



former Postal Delivery Building, Toronto - Part II

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the article! I was looking for reference to when it was original built. I have some great photos of the reliefs from the late 1980s when it was still waiting for demolition.

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  2. Wow Andy! Are they online anywhere? Can we see them?

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