TOBuilt: Blog for Toronto buildings database

September 1, 2009: Why no updates?

I have not updated the data on this site since June. Part of the reason for this has been weather-related - it was not a promising summer for taking photos, and I am fairly insistent on blue skies when I go on excursions to take photos. Also, many of the buildings I still on my list to photograph are far from home and require a large commitment of time to get to where they are at - so I don't really head out unless the day is perfectly sunny and seems likely to stay that way.

This summer did not see many weekend days with perfectly sunny skies.

When the skies were kind, I was often as not out of town or otherwise occupied and not free to chase buildings.

And I will be unable to take photos for most of September, so I think my next updates won't be for a few months yet.

Nonetheless, my intention to capture every heritage building in the city, and keep up to date on taller buildings remains firm, and I look forward to increasing the comprehensiveness of the site over the winter.

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June 20, 2009: More updates (and more to come)

Slightly over 600 new photos have been added, and many building descriptions too, from Humber Bay to York Mills to Woburn.

I maintain a standing list of buildings which I want to capture, which currently stands at just over 300 buidings - a mixture of heritage buildings, buildings that have won an award or two, and various others. 300 may not sound like a large addition to a database with about 9,500 images, but the 300 that remain are rather widespread and far away from downtown, so they are individually quite a challenge for me to get to. I always try to capture buildings with some good light on their best face, which complicates the process even more, as it often means returning to the same part of town on multiple occasions.

Nonetheless, as my backlog of listed buildings decreases, I manage to reach some milestones. I currently have no buildings on my list in East York, which makes it my first "completed city" since I set out to photograph all heritage buildings, along with some others. Though it's one of the smaller former divisions of Toronto, I take some pleasure from having it completed.

That's not to say I won't add more buildings in East York in the future, but right now getting rid of my"backlog" is more important.

It's a particular pleasure to finally have taken photos of the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant, and a few other buildings related to water utilities. I'm quite keen to get all the pumping stations, reservoirs, and tanks in TOBuilt, though I am not quite there yet.

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May 9, 2009: More buildings - and artwork

The site was updated today with about an additional 500 images. These include recently completed buildings around town, and heritage buildings around town, including some in Scarborough and North York, especially in the Bridle Path area.

I'm taking more and more photos of buildings that are not simply attempts to capture an entire building with a single photo, to show how it appears. For instance, the Bank of Nova Scotia building on King Street West at the heart of the Financial District now has images of some of carvings that grace the buildings.

Similarly, the Mowat Block, part of the Queen's Park Complex of Ontario Government Buildings, now has many photos in TOBuilt of the interior of the main part of the complex, showing details of some of the fabulous artwork that lies within. I've always been fond of the Queen's Park Complex and the artwork that rests within, it's like a gallery with a permanent exhibition of 1968 works. The photos on the site are meant to give a taste of the artwork within and encourage people to stroll over and visit it in person - they can never replace the feeling of being in front of some of these great pieces.

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April 5, 2009: An update

The database was refreshed with more data and buildings today. Included are many of the buildings in the Riverdale Heritage Conservation District, and in the Cabbagetown North West Heritage Conservation District. There are also buildings from Cedarvale in York, in Forest Hill, and some from Etobicoke.

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February 10, 2009: More buildings

The database was updated, with more buildings added, including quite a few from Toronto's newest heritage conservation distriction in Riverdale (though not all buildings from the district are yet photographed).

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January 20, 2009: New tall buildings page

Toronto is undeniably a city of tall buildings, spread more evenly throughout the city than is the case with most cities. In fact, the origins of this site arise from my attempt to photograph all high-rises in town. A major new addition to the site is launched with this updated version of TOBuilt.

The Tall Buildings HomePage provides access to loads of data about tall buildings in Toronto. The page provides graphics which show the spread of tall buildings into almost every neighbourhood in the city (which in turn include links to lists of highrises by neighbourhood), graphs showing the number of high-rise buildings constructed over time, and links to lists over 100 metres high, divided into various categories.

I hope you enjoy this new resource.

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November 10, 2008: More info on main building page

I have now successfully got companies that are related to a building showing on the main building page. If you think this was easy, well, it was not, but I'm quite pleased with the results.

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November 2, 2008: Now with over 9,000 structures!

I've loaded a large update with many new buildings and images. These are fairly widespread, from photos of a number of recently completed buildings in the central city, to images of the Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church that won a Governor's General Medal recently, to images of far-northern Etobicoke including the north campus of Humber College. It was a pleasure to see the Centre for Urban Ecology in person.

Did you know that the Woodbine Racetrack was a finalist for a Massey Medal?

I added one more demolished tall building (a factory for the T. Eaton Company). I am only aware of one additional building in Toronto that was 12 storeys or over which has been demolished, and I am trying to research that now.

I also added a few never built proposals, including the remarkable Toronto Towers project, consisting of what would have been the city's tallest building and tallest hotel. Other recently-added proposals that were not realized are Buckminster Fuller's pyramid proposal for the waterfront, and College Park Phase 3.

I am pleased to note that the site seems operational, most of the time. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

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September 8, 2008: Clear sailing

The last major problem I had with the site, which gave some odd results with browse lists, has been cleared up and the browse lists are all working now. Essentially, this returns the site to its optimal functionality. For those of you who have been frustrated over the past year, I apologise. It seems to be operating on a much more stable platform now, and I can concentrate on the data, which is really where my heart lies.

I also did an update on the database, but not that many new buildings or photos were added.

I hope to introduce some new functionality soon, especially with an enhanced series of browse lists.

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August 26, 2008: Fewer problems, more buildings

I've updated the site again, adding many more buildings, including at York University, the Black Creek Pioneer Village, almost all of the Queen Street Heritage Conservation District, and buildings along the lakeshore from Long Branch stretching well into Scarborough. I'm especially pleased with the photos of St. Augustine's Seminary in Scarborough, which by chance I arrived at late in the day and saw in perfect light.

Most issues with the site are fixed. The link from individual buildings to companies associated with them has been restored.

There is still a problem if you have done a search and then choose to browse (I don't understand sessions very well and its including the results of your search in your browse option). But I'm working away on this and other small issues, and hope to have them all fixed shortly.

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August 12, 2008: Searching by companies is back!

You can use the search form to locate all buildings by a particular company. Note that the page for searching companies has changed it's name, so only the link from this page will currently get you to the "Search companies" form. I will fix that soon.

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August 10, 2008: Finally, substantial work in being done to bring TOBuilt back up to speed.

Some of the kinks in the searching have been worked out, and the data has been updated substantially. Most, but not all, of the missing images have been re-linked (though there are still a few that have gone awry). I am still working on getting the "Search companies" feature working, and the "Search awards" is not yet returning accurate results. Also, many of the browse lists still don't work, and the "Browse by neighbourhood" works best if you haven't yet done any other searches in the database. Sigh, that seems like a lot to fix.

Now that work has begun in earnest, though, I expect the site to be stronger by the week.

A new feature of the site is a link to Google Maps that takes you to the location of the structure.

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February 20, 2008: Progress is being done.

"Search buildings", "Browse by neighbourhood" and "Browse most recent" is working for the most part.

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February 11, 2008: This site is not fully functional at the moment.

We're in the process of reinstating it using MySQL as a database. It will take time to learn so please be patient. We know a lot have found the site useful and many are looking foward for it to be online again. Thank you for your kind words of encouragement.

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January 19, 2007 - Site was down most of Friday!

Perhaps because of volume of use due to a Globe and Mail article that appeared on Friday, the site was down for most of the day. It seems to be back up now, and I hope it stays that way.

I should make clear that this site is the hobby of a single, not terribly technical person with a day-job. As well, it runs off an MS Access database which is less than optimal under heavy load conditions. Those who wrote to suggest my IT guys do something or make some changes may not be clear about this. I (and my partner) are my IT department, which is probably unfortunately for me and my users.

Anyways, I hope the site remains up and open and is not too slow, and that those who came during the day on Friday will come back later.

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January 9, 2007 - CFRB Interview

Many thanks to Dave LeBlanc, who interviewed me for his CFRB show Architourist, which aired on December 11 and 14. You can hear the interview by clicking here (though it will take a minute or more to download). This show is ÓDave LeBlanc.

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January 1, 2007 - Happy New Year

Data on the site was updated today, only a few new buildings, but lots of background information such as links to companies, etc.

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December 8, 2006 - Heritage browse lists

Three new browse lists have been added to TOBuilt, each focussing on historical or heritage buildings. One highlights National Historic Sites in Toronto, one lists the oldest buildings in TOBuilt, and the third highlights buildings that have recently been demolished in the city, or those that are threatened in the next while. Click here to view the lists.

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November 15, 2006 - Destruction

Gray skies find me at the Toronto Reference Library filling in gaps in "missing buildings", especially in this case Massey Award winners or finalists that have been ripped down. Unfortunately, there are no shortage of these to be found. Currently, searching on destroyed Massey winners yields twelve hits, and sometimes it seems to me almost as if Toronto's award winning buildings are singled out for demolition.

It almost makes one wonder if we should avoid giving awards to our favourite buildings. Perhaps instead we should bestow awards primarily on those buildings we'd like to see torn down.

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November 6, 2006

TOBuilt was down over the weekend of November 4-5, due to server problems with the hosting service.

A bit of morning sun on Saturday the 4th gave me the opportunity to catch a few buildings, before the inevitable winter clouds rolled in. It's now been updated with a small number of new buildings, all in North York.

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October 17, 2006

I've updated the database and the reports page, with a small number of photos. Primarily some houses in Cabbagetown that I took photos of towards the end of the summer but didn't add to the database, a few buildings in Scarborough (I had the use of a car recently) and some recent towers.

TOBuilt was featured in the Globe & Mail on September 23rd, I've put the text of the article on my blog, click on "Continued and Previous Blogs" below to read the article. Or click here for an image of the article showing accompanying photos, that might be harder to read.

In the fall I often do a photo update of buildings in central Toronto that are under construction, for my good friends over at Urban Toronto Forum. If you're interested in what's new, as of Thanksgiving Weekend, you can see the photo album here.

Text of the Globe and Mail Article as follows:

His interest is building
This super-fan won't stop until he's shot all the city's great structures. He's up to 7,647

CATHERINE DAWSON MARCH

You may recognize Bob Krawczyk.

For the past five years, he has been cycling around the city taking pictures of buildings in just about every neighbourhood for his website, tobuilt.ca: tall buildings, historical buildings, unusual buildings, buildings that have won awards, buildings that are important to the city and buildings that, for some reason or another, simply caught his eye. So far, he's shot 7,647. Your house may even be one of them.

"I'm pretty liberal about what I'll include," says the 43-year-old, whose day job is as a senior solutions analyst for the Ministry of Government Services. "I tend to like municipal infrastructure, so on my list I have all the libraries and pumping stations."

But he's an equal opportunity fan: He has a long-standing fascination with high-rises (18 Yorkville St. is a favourite), but he has also fallen in love with a modern home on Heathdale Road that looks like a pile of wooden blocks ("I actually felt moved by seeing it," he says), and admires the Prairie-style home on Heath Street West. A committed downtowner, he has biked as far east as the Rouge Valley to explore abandoned farmhouses and as far north as Steeles Avenue to scout suburban condos.

Mr. Krawczyk's personal website, which officially went live last month, is something of an archival masterpiece -- an on-line treasure trove that could be the most comprehensive public photo database of Toronto architecture around. (Not even the inventory of heritage properties at Heritage Toronto has accompanying photographs.)

The site is densely packed: Whether it's an Annex semi or Celestica's offices in North York, each listing has an address, number of floors, often the architect's name and a construction date. It's searchable, by address, neighbourhood or even by "oddities and whatnots."

In fact, the real thrill for Mr. Krawczyk is compiling the data. He picks up tips on new developments from on-line communities such as Urban Toronto. He checks the City of Toronto community council agendas to suss out which buildings will be granted heritage status. A few years ago, he spent a week at the National Library in Ottawa reading old copies of The Daily Commercial News and Construction Record to get the scoop on less famous buildings.

Is it a hobby or an obsession? "I like to organize data. I'm professionally trained as an archivist, and for me, organizing a big heap of misaligned data is a pleasure," he laughs.

When he was young, he organized and collected, among other things, 20 years worth of Mad magazine. But his latest collection got its start when Mr. Krawczyk discovered a website called skyscrapers.com a few years ago. The volunteer-run site was trying to list every tall building in the world, and information about Toronto's skyscrapers was woefully lacking. He set out on a one-man mission to change that, snapping everything higher than 12 storeys -- in the end, more than 1,600 images.

Mr. Krawczyk was hooked. He widened his search to include homes, bridges, gates, statues, even lampposts. Any significant structure was fair game, and once found, his facts were compiled into lists and spreadsheets. He can sort his spreadsheets by neighbourhood, for example, or number of storeys, but what he does most often is sort by the direction each building faces.

"I'm trying to get most of the buildings with nice sun conditions and blue sky. So let's say that I finish work one day and it's sunny; what I might do is quickly sort my spreadsheet and say, 'Okay, I'm going to Leslieville and Riverdale.' So I'll sort my list and I'll find all the buildings that are west-facing because those are the buildings that I'm going to shoot."

Photographing all the buildings on his list in optimal sunlight makes for a lot of return trips -- which can make this innocent hobby look suspicious. "I've had a lot of problems in Rosedale," Mr. Krawczyk says. "Private security guards have either followed me or asked me what I was doing on quite a few occasions."

But it's been worth the hassle. "If the site does one thing," he says, "I hope it makes people look at buildings that surround them with a fresh eye."

Ernie Buchner, the executive director of Heritage Toronto, says it's hard to believe that tobuilt.ca is the handiwork of one person in his spare time. "The guy's done a fantastic job," he says.

But Mr. Krawczyk says he isn't finished. He has about 1,000 more heritage properties to find and photograph, mostly in the outskirts of Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke that are hard to reach by bike. Plus, he takes requests.

But he is already looking forward to conquering his next category. "I think I'd like to concentrate on all the modernist buildings from the fifties and sixties. That information is really hard to find."
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September 26, 2006

Since the Globe & Mail published an article on Saturday the 23rd about TOBuilt, the site has been busier than before and I apologise if you've had trouble accessing it.

I've received quite a bit of feedback since then, including some suggestions for buildings to include, a large number of corrections, and hellos from friends and from a number of people I'd lost contact with. It's been fun and the response has been quite positive. I'd like to thank Cathy Dawson-March for a great article. I'll post a copy when I have permission from the Globe to do so.

Though I haven't necessarily announced it, I do make small changes to the data from time to time. However, I probably won't be adding very many buildings in the next while; the fall is generally a slower time.

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August 19, 2006

Data updated, I've added about 400 new images and about 300 new building descriptions to the site, and updated the reports page that summarizes the data.

I set myself a goal for the summer and now I'm close to finishing it, which is to photograph all buildings on my lists of all buildings for the former city of Toronto. I still have quite a few photos to take in the largest of the Heritage Conservation Districts - Cabbagetown, Rosedale and North Rosedale - and most of those buildings are north-facing houses that are quite difficult to photograph pleasantly.

There are lots of new buildings in North York, particulary in York Mills, Graydon and Flemingdon Park.

My first "requested" building, at 375 Brunswick in the Annex, is also available. Requests are welcome.

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August 8, 2006

Site revisions are ongoing, so you might find strange things or bad formatting from time to time. Mostly I continue to work on the Building Details page.

Links to companies from buildings are operational. As of now, the Building Details page contains a link to the companies (architects, etc.) associated with a building. In the future, I'd like to show this information directly on the Building Details page, but that's a big project, so the link is a short term solution for that.

Since the site has been announced at UrbanToronto there has been good and helpful feedback about it. Eventually, this site will become part of an expanded UrbanToronto site.

A few people have suggested converting the site to a Wiki, with additional contributors. In some ways, it's a great idea. Toronto is big enough that it's hard to keep track of the current status of all the new developments, and the site would benefit from the input of many photographers and editors. It would make for a less predictable site, and probably result in more up to date information. However, it would require a lot of coding and administration on my part and I'm more interested in making TOBuilt as functional as possible as it is, and continuing to gather data.

The other things is, I'm a bit of a control freak. I have some official training as an archivist with associated library skills like content analysis and controlled vocabularies. A lot of effort has gone into defining the various searchable lists that provide access to buildings (like defining neighbourhoods, and building types, etc.) and then applying these in a more or less consistent manner to the buildings. With only one person contributing data you have the advantage of more consistent database. Of course, the distinctions I have drawn between various categories of buildings might only make sense to me, but I've tried my best to make them accessible.

From my experience at the former Skyscrapers.com, I also realized that while I think it is great fun to add data and play with a website, it's uninteresting and somewhat stressful to deal with other people's proposed data. More than once I'd put effort into a building only to discover later that someone made changes (incorrectly) to my data. That's boring, and this is my hobby, so it's pretty important for me to enjoy it.

All of which is to say, it will be a cold day in hell before anybody else gets their grubby little non-information-professional hands in my data. Just kidding, but wiki not.

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August 3, 2006: Welcome to TO Built!

This site is under development, so you might find strange things or bad formatting from time to time.

This site provides access to information about over 7,000 Toronto buildings (and other structures). Buildings are added to as they are photographed, so the number of buildings will continue to grow.

Most buildings have basic information about them listed, such as their address, etc., and almost all buildings are accompanied by a photograph or other image. Buildings may also have list of architects and other companies associated with them, awards that they have won, additional photos, and sources of information for the building.

Searching or browsing the buildings in any way will give a set of brief results, from there you can click for a full building result. As of early August, the full building result is the only significantly incomplete part of TOBuilt. I'd like this to be more clearly formatted, and as well to display on one page the buildings and awards associated with a building. I'd also like to give some indication of whether there are actually sources or additional images on the page. All things in time.

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