After a late lunch on the patio of the Bedford Academy, Peter and I wandered up Prince Arthur Avenue to catch a matinée at the Varsity. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and we were in no hurry, so we stopped to admire Uno Prii’s Prince Arthur Towers. Like any other city, Toronto is full of bland residential architecture built after WWII, but there are exceptions. Harry Hiller, for one, hired Prii for his projects, resulting in some of Toronto’s finest buildings from the 60s. Today amidst Toronto’s condo boom, most of the new residential buildings are forgettable, to say the least. Sadly, it’s difficult to force a developer to design a building that makes a statement other than, “we’ve spent as little as possible on architecture here”. But, here and there, you can find gems like Prince Arthur Towers that richen the environment around them.
