former Toronto Hydro-Electric Building

According to Tim Morawetz in Art Deco Architecture in Toronto, the Toronto Hydro-Electric Building was constructed from 1931 to 1933 from designs by architects Chapman and Oxley with associate Albert E Salisbury.

From a distance the buildng is very plain except for the decoration along the roofline. Originally the building was intended to be much taller so the current roofline is a band of decoration that would have appeared part-up up the original design.

The central four spandrels of the building are topped which these figures overlooking the street below.

A closer look between the modern t-shirt decals above the ground floor windows also reveals two pairs of relief panels.

The two smaller panels, in my opinion, show woman working with a ribbon of electricity bringing power to a number of home appliances and a man using another ribbon of power in an industrial setting.

The larger reliefs depict figures in a stylised settings perhaps relating to the generation and transmission of electric power.

I particularily like the wavy hair of the figure against the electricity wires in this relief.