Lavish art deco gem still shines
[attach]583[/attach]There is no denying Tim Morawetz’s love of art deco architecture.
He studied it at Carleton University. He was hooked on the works of Ernest Cormier, noted for the Supreme Court of Canada building in Ottawa, and John M. Lyle, an English-Canadian architect. He’s attended four world congresses on art deco and lectured at two of them. And he’s led downtown art deco walking tours during Toronto’s ArtsWeek for more than 15 years.
In 1993, after returning from his second world congress, held in Australia, Morawetz set himself a project to find and photograph art deco buildings across Canada. Over the next few years, he travelled to all 10 provinces documenting the buildings he loves.
Armed with just a city map and not knowing exactly where these gems were hidden, Morawetz said over time he developed a sense for where they might be by referring to historical patterns and the original downtown core maps.
He’s just published a book called Art Deco Architecture in Toronto: A Guide to the City’s Buildings from the Roaring Twenties and the Depression showcasing and describing more than 70 of the city’s art deco buildings, mostly constructed between 1925 and 1940.
Forest Hill’s Eglinton Theatre is just one of the buildings he mentions in the book.
Designed in 1934 by the city’s premier cinema architects at the time — Kaplan and Sprachman — the theatre’s highlight, notes Morawetz, is the bold neon-lit sign.
“It’s got the most elaborate marquee signage of any movie house in Toronto,” he said.
Boasting 775 seats, the Eglinton Theatre was perhaps one of the biggest art deco movie houses when it opened, but today it operates as a special events venue under the name Eglinton Grand. Some of its art deco is still intact.
“The interior has significantly changed,” Morawetz said. “The outside marquee is intact, which still includes the neon lighting, but some of the horizontal lighting is no longer present.”
Inside the theatre the floors have been leveled, as most floors during the 1930’s used to slope downwards toward the screen. In its time, the theatre was lavishly decorated with art deco and streamline moderne.
“Like many theatres, the characteristic of the inside space of the auditorium drew your eye with lines toward the screen,” Morawetz said. “Even the exit doors often had decoration above them or around them to accent the interior charm.”
In Art Deco Architecture in Toronto, Morawetz explains Toronto was for the most part a very conservative city in the 1920’s.
“If you compare the art deco you find in Toronto to New York City, it is more muted in its decoration,” he said. “It was a reflection of the character of Toronto and architects around that time really embraced the style.”
Most of the book’s photographs were taken between 1980 and 1995, and, Morawetz admitted, it was tough determining which art deco buildings to exclude.
“There are more art deco buildings in Toronto than there was space for,” he said. “Picking images that best represent the building and to reveal it’s uniqueness was quite a challenge for me.”
The art deco period was accessible and friendly, Morawetz said, so he wanted to make the kind of book anyone could throw in their knapsack and use as a guidebook while walking around the city or have sitting on their coffee table.
“Art deco is a very populist style,” said Morawetz. “It’s not overly academic and it’s not intended to intimidate people.
“It was really capturing the positive spirit of the ’20s — the jazz age.”