Bruce Bell, History Columnist –
After a decade of political wrangling and never-ending construction, St. Lawrence’s new North Market – the sixth to stand on the same spot – is finally open.
In the late summer of 1803, an army engineer from Fort York stood on this same spot and with a wooden stick drew lines in the good earth to outline the first market. A few months later, Lieutenant Governor Peter Hunter proclaimed the new public market officially open. From that day forth, on every Saturday for the past two centuries, merchants, farmers, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers have come to sell their goods.
That first market was rudimentary, but in a town with only 500 residents it was welcome.
As the little town grew, a competition was held in 1831 to build a larger market. Architect James Cooper was declared the winner and was paid 25 pounds – then a two-year salary for the average worker – for his efforts.
In that second market, above the main entryway on Front Street, Toronto established its first City Hall after the Town of York was incorporated into the City of Toronto in 1834.
In that first City Hall, city fathers voted to rename the public market as St Lawrence Market after one of Canada’s patron saints. (Upon discovering the mouth of a vast river in 1534, Jacques Cartier declared that the river should be named after the early Christian martyr, Saint Lawrence.)
The second market, which also housed a hotel, was destroyed during the Great Fire of 1849. So another market competition was held, with the winner being architect Henry Bower Lane.
As this third market was being constructed in 1850, the Industrial Revolution came roaring into Toronto turning an agriculturally based town into a large polluted city infused with thick black toxic coal gas. Once a backwater colonial outpost, Toronto was by the end of the 19th century an industrial powerhouse with a population close to a quarter million souls.
Demolition of the third market in 1900 made way for one of the largest buildings ever constructed in Canada to that time: Toronto’s fourth St Lawrence Market.
Designed by architect John William Siddel, this market was a masterpiece of late Victorian commercial architecture, taking almost three city blocks with an immense glass and steel shed stretching across Front Street to connect the market’s two main buildings, North and South.
Siddel also saved the centre block of Toronto’s second City Hall, built in 1844, now encased within the present-day South Market building.
The enormous glass and steel shed over Front Street was removed in 1954 and the north building, a copy of the south building though not quite as long, was demolished in 1967. Today all that remains of Siddal’s colossal market is the current South St Lawrence Market, a massive structure in its own right.
Siddel’s North Market was replaced with a fifth market building, designed by architect JG Sutherland, in 1968. This market was part of Toronto’s official centennial project marking the 100th birthday of the Dominion of Canada. While the new modern market was dull and uninspired, restoration of its elegant St. Lawrence Hall neighbour, also part of the centenary, was a brilliant move.
This fifth market was demolished in 2012.
The new North Market was designed by Adamson Associates Architects and Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. The ‘Rogers’ in the name refers to Richard Rogers, architect and builder of one of the world’s most controversial buildings; the 1976 Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Surrounded by ancient buildings, the colourful yet notorious Pompidou Centre has its duct work, pipes, escalators, and electrical installation exposed on the outside. (Not all buildings in Paris are romantic 19th-century jewels.)
I was a little sad to see the North Market demolished. However, it’s not whether the building is attractive or dreadful that makes a market great, it’s the people who buy and sell their products in it. A few years back National Geographic magazine picked St Lawrence Market (North and South) as the #1 food market in the world.
And so its new era, a far cry from what early farmers and their customers were accustomed to, has begun.
