I QUIT

It’s the entrance to Metro Hall, the PATH, and, soon, St. Andrew station at King and University (145 King St. West).

A-frame roofs in glass and granite columns with triangular incisions at top stand before soaring skyscrapers

It’s just an entrance! And it is easily the best-detailed postmodern structure in the city. It’s so postmodern it’s Spy-checklist-compliant.

  • Does the building have pilasters or pediments or the same colour scheme as the 1984 Summer Olympics?
  • Is it a cube with a peaked roof?
  • For a building, is it funny?
  • Is it funny but not a Las Vegas Hotel or a fast-food stand in Los Angeles?
  • Is it easy to like?
Multiple nested peaked roofs; tall granite column with triangular incision and seam running down each side

I noticed this vestibule only after it was suddenly surrounded by construction hoardings. This was to become the wheelchair-accessible entrance of the St. Andrew subway station. My heart sank, because the TTC is an organization that literally cannot match tiles on adjoining walls.

What a surprise: The new entrance has the same profile as the many other nested A-frames of the existing structure, but, in true postmodern form, it uses a different colour of granite to call attention to itself.

Black granite structure on new entrance

The only purpose for this structure is as an entrance to an underground complex. It is orders of magnitude better than it needs to be. It is amazeballs.

The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2012.05.28 15:46. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is:
https://blog.fawny.org/2012/05/28/145/

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