TweetFlashing back to 1903, New York’s Andrew Carnegie funded a series of four new Toronto Public Library branches with a budget of $350,000. Designed in a classical Beaux Arts style by architect Robert McCallum, the Yorkville Branch (in what was then the north end of the city), was thought to capture the stately elegance of libraries in smaller communities across Ontario.
Today, aging gracefully and still standing as elegantly as ever along Yorkville Ave. between Yonge St. and Bay St., the city’s oldest library is a little slice of yesteryear tucked among high-rise condos, luxury boutiques, and world-class restaurants in what has become one of the most coveted and iconic neighbourhoods of Toronto.
The Yorkville branch has seen an evolution of this infamous south midtown stretch from barren farmland, to 1960’s hippie coffee houses, to the glitz and glamour of celebs during TIFF season.
Stealing a quiet moment, and stepping inside evokes the classic sights, smells, and sounds of a time gone-by when visiting the library was a sort of sacred experience, rather than a foreign one.
Toronto has, of course, progressed enormously in the last century and although we are on the cusp of a brand new era, is it interesting to think that the Yorkville Branch construction in 1907 was too the beginning of a new age for the people of this city. Public access to knowledge was a relatively novel idea, and over 100 years later, that same notion is echoed with the proliferation of the Internet. Our thirst and reverence for learning has not diminished, rather it has shifted, and the Yorkville Branch looks like it is certainly up to the challenge.
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