Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City That Might Have Been.

George Bryant is an active field botanist and past-president of the Field Botanists of Ontario.

For those who love Toronto and the buildings and roads that make the city, this is a difficult book to put down. Most of us don’t consider that for every significant edifice or building complex in the city, there may be dozens of alternate designs that never materialized. This book is, in particular, a history of those failed designs, and more generally, a history of the construction in Toronto.

Starting in 1788 with the 10 square blocks that would form the nucleus of the new city, Osbaldesten reviews the progress of the city over the centuries up to the new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum. Contents are divided into five sections: “Master Plans,” “Church and Government,” “Transportation,” “Towers and Arts,” “Letters and Leisure.” Each section includes six or seven chapters covering a particular municipal project.

Some of the design competitions are viewed with an emphasis on the unsuccessful entries; these include various city halls (Toronto old and new, Mississauga), Prince Edward Viaduct, Island Tunnel, the Spadina Expressway, and the CN Tower. The book is amply illustrated with 147 black and white photographs and illustrations, maps, and architectural sketches, most obtained from city and provincial archives. Although the author focuses on a history of uncompleted public projects and unrealized architectural ambitions, he also provides a commentary on the development of Toronto. Many schemes failed but some succeeded, and these are referenced throughout the text.

The book concludes with an epilogue that features evocative pictures taken following the great fire of 1904 in which 20 acres of downtown Toronto burned to the ground in a single evening. In the same year, E.J. Lennox, arguably Toronto’s most famous architect, wrote an article called “What Will the Architectural Appearance of Toronto Be in the Year 2000 A.D.?”  His predictions, along with the author’s observations, form a fascinating conclusion to the book.

To anyone interested in the history of Toronto, this book is a delightful study.