Riverside Towns bring density but make glib attempt to fit with neighbourhood architecture

Christopher Hume – Toronto Star

Messy and makeshift, Broadview Ave. south of the Danforth is one of those utilitarian Toronto streets that serves many purposes and people.

Residential in stretches, it is also a commercial, retail and restaurant strip that caters to a large and varied community. But Broadview is also one of those city arteries that has never amounted to more than the sum of its parts. Though there are occasional architectural gems – the Toronto Public Library at Gerrard St., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church and, of course, the impressive Romanesque heap at Queen St. best known as the home of one of Toronto’s last strip clubs – Broadview has the hang-dog quality of a neighbourhood accustomed to being neglected.

At the same time, further north, where Riverdale Park East opens up the landscape, passersby can enjoy the best view of downtown Toronto the city has to offer. The fact that Broadview Ave. is served by two streetcar lines make it much more accessible than its east-end location would imply. In other words, Broadview is ripe for a remake.

Riverside Towns – 140 Broadview Avenue

This stacked-townhouse development is an example of the good and bad of mondo condo.

With 63 living units, there’s room here for a lot of people. Toronto can accommodate increased density, especially in an area such as Queen and Broadview. Though a clutch of nice old houses was demolished to make way for Riverside, the new housing will add population to the neighbourhood and promote revitalization.

As a new element on the landscape, however, the development feels all wrong. Designed in that ersatz style known as “Victorian,” it is too obviously a pastiche, a clumsy gloss of 19th-century architecture.

The stone bases, peaked rooflines and mullioned windows have been reduced to decorative gestures applied to the exterior surfaces of a lowrise box. Sales departments like historicism because buyers like historicism. Yet across Toronto, there is a growing number of frankly modernist townhouses that fit comfortably with the old city.

Indeed, Riverside’s architectural glibness clashes most painfully with the real 1800s housing on every side. This sort of stuff no longer belongs in Toronto.

Whether it’s on Broadview Ave., Jarvis St. or even Parliament St., it looks out of place and vaguely silly.

Grade: C

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Contact Laurin Jeffrey for more information – 416-388-1960

Laurin Jeffrey is a Toronto Realtor with Century 21 Regal Realty. He did not
write these articles, he just reproduces them here for people who are
interested in Toronto real estate. He does not work for any builders.
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