/The Town of Mount Royal was billed as a "new Westmount" when designed about a century ago at the other end of a train tunnel to downtown. Toronto architect Frank Darling (possibly related to 31-year-mayor
Thomas Darling?) came up with the idea and
Frederick Todd, an experienced designer who worked with Olmstead, did the rest of the
road layout details.
Garden City notions of healthy-happy park-filled utopia coloured the plan for what was called "Model City," which was to have spokes coming out of a central wheel.
The
layout mimics that of Washington D.C. but some believe the underlying message was to announce loudly the British-ness of the area by replicating the Union Jack.
gee, not much to say about old TMR, eh? well, how about some vintage pics of the old rockland shopping centre before it turned into an indoor mall. it had a morgans (soon to be the bay) a steinbergs, laura secord, brown's shoes, macy's, bovet, a cool harder store that had great posters and where dad bought my first hockey stick! (a koho! they were $7 while all domestics were 5) classics books with a spiral stair to bargains downstairs, so much more.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/63018108@N06/6169068212/
A Macy's? Really?
DeleteMorgan's (later to be renamed The Bay) was, in fact, responsible for the development of the original Rockland Shopping Centre.
ReplyDeleteIronically, during the planning stages, certain residents were up in arms, fearful of the commercialization of the area, not to forget that the project was to be built at the north end of the former TMR Golf Course, which, in any event, later closed.
See:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1882&dat=19550902&id=B8kxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jeMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1751,2367798