Brookfield Place (formerly BCE Place), is an office complex in

downtown Toronto Downtown Toronto is the main central business district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located entirely within the district of Old Toronto, it is approximately 16.6 square kilometres in area, bounded by Bloor Street to the northeast and Dupont Stre ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada, comprising the block bounded by

Yonge Street Yonge Street (; pronounced "young") is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. Once the southernmost leg of provincial Hi ...

, Wellington Street West,

Bay Street Bay Street is a major thoroughfare in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the centre of Toronto's Financial District and is often used by metonymy to refer to Canada's financial services industry since succeeding Montreal's St. James Stree ...

, and Front Street. The complex contains of office space, and consists of two towers, Bay Wellington Tower and TD Canada Trust Tower, linked by the Allen Lambert Galleria. Brookfield Place is also the home of the

Hockey Hall of Fame , logo = Hockey Hall of Fame Logo.svg , logo_upright = 0.5 , image = Hockey Hall of Fame, Toronto.jpg , caption = The Hall's present location on Yonge Street since 1992 , map_type = , former_name = , established = 1943 , location = 30 Y ...

(housed in an opulent former bank from 1885).

Design

The TD Canada Trust Tower is noted for its recessed design and spire on the upper levels and stands at 53 storeys. Designed by Bregman + Hamann Architects and

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...

, the tower was completed in 1990 and was initially known as the

Canada Trust Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by total ...

Tower until 2000 when

Toronto-Dominion Bank Toronto-Dominion Bank (french: links=no, Banque Toronto-Dominion), doing business as TD Bank Group (french: links=no, Groupe Banque TD), is a Canadian Multinational corporation, multinational banking and financial services corporation headquarte ...

purchased Canada Trust. Canada Trust signage was atop the spire of building until 2000 when it was replaced by a "TD" logo. Until July 2015, the "TD" logo in the downtown Toronto skyline was solely displayed on the Canada Trust Tower, unlike the nearby towers of the

Toronto-Dominion Centre The Toronto-Dominion Centre, or TD Centre, is an office complex in the Financial District, Toronto, Financial District of downtown Toronto owned by Cadillac Fairview. It serves as the global headquarters for its anchor tenant, the Toronto-Dominio ...

which lacked signage. Bay Wellington Tower is a 49-story office tower, designed by Bregman + Hamann Architects and completed in 1992. Architecturally it is meant to complement the Canada Trust Tower; for instance parts of the Bay Wellington Tower are recessed while that of the Canada Trust Tower would protrude out and vice versa, and the Bay Wellington Tower has a twin peak or double spires compared to the Canada Trust Tower's single spire.

Allen Lambert Galleria

Allen Lambert Galleria, sometimes described as the "crystal cathedral of commerce", is an atrium designed by Spanish architect

Santiago Calatrava Santiago Calatrava Valls (born 28 July 1951) is a Spanish architect, structural engineer, sculptor and painter, particularly known for his bridges supported by single leaning pylons, and his railway stations, stadiums, and museums, whose sculpt ...

which connects Bay Street with

Sam Pollock Samuel Patterson Smyth Pollock, OC, CQ (December 15, 1925 – August 15, 2007) was a Canadian sports executive who was general manager of the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens for 14 years during which they won 9 Stanley Cups. Pollock ...

Square. Structural Design was completed by Yolles Parnership Inc., while the General Contractor was PCL Construction and the Structural Steel was fabricated by Canron Construction Corporation. The six story high pedestrian thoroughfare is structured by eight freestanding supports on each side of the Galleria, which branch out into parabolic shapes evoking a forest canopy or a tree-lined avenue because of the presence of building facades along the sides of the structure. The Galleria was the result of an international competition and was incorporated into the development in order to satisfy the City of Toronto's

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

requirements. It is a frequently photographed space, and is heavily featured as a backdrop for news reports, as well as TV and film productions. The

parabolic arched A parabolic arch is an arch in the shape of a parabola.Article about parabolic arch by The Free DictionaryParabolic arch , Article about parabolic arch by The Free Dictionary accessdate: March 2, 2017 In structures, their curve represents an eff ...

roof that Santiago Calatrava created for the assembly hall of the Wohlen High School in

Wohlen Wohlen is a municipality in the district of Bremgarten in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. History The earliest known settlements in Wohlen date from the late Hallstatt era (600-500 BC). This settlement left two clusters of burial moun ...

Aargau Aargau, more formally the Canton of Aargau (german: Kanton Aargau; rm, Chantun Argovia; french: Canton d'Argovie; it, Canton Argovia), is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eleven districts and its capita ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, is generally considered to be a precursor of the vaulted, parabolic ceiling in the Galleria.

Ownership

Brookfield Place serves as the headquarters for

Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties is a North American subsidiary of commercial real estate company Brookfield Property Partners, which itself is a subsidiary of alternative asset management company Brookfield Asset Management. It is responsible for the pro ...

, which owns the Bay Wellington Tower section of the complex. The TD Tower section was owned in entirety by the

Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) is a Canadian public pension fund, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. OMERS is a defined benefit, jointly sponsored, multi-employer public pension plan created in 1962 by Ontario provinci ...

(OMERS) through its subsidiary

Oxford Properties Oxford Properties is a Canadian multinational corporation, with operations in real estate investment, development and property management. Its portfolio includes office, retail, industrial, multi-residential, life sciences and hotel assets. Esta ...

. In late 2012 or early 2013, OMERS and an unconfirmed entity identified in news reports as the

Public Sector Pension Investment Board The Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) is a Canadian Crown corporation established by an act of Parliament in September 1999. PSP Investments is one of Canada's largest pension investment managers, with CAD $204.5 billion of n ...

(PSP) completed a swap transaction in which OMERS reduced its ownership stake in the tower to 50%. According to the ''

Financial Post The ''Financial Post'' was an English Canadian business newspaper, which published from 1907 to 1998. In 1998, the publication was folded into the new ''National Post'',"Black says Post to merge with new paper". ''The Globe and Mail'', July 23, ...

'', "A spokesman for PSP would not confirm the deal had taken place, noting the pension fund never comments on any transaction." The swap valued the 50% stake in the tower at C$465 million, or C$750 per square foot, a record for commercial property in Canada.

Hockey Hall of Fame

The opulent former

Bank of Montreal The Bank of Montreal (BMO; french: Banque de Montréal, link=no) is a Canadian multinational investment bank and financial services company. The bank was founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1817 as Montreal Bank; while its head office remains in ...

branch at the northwest corner of Yonge and Front streets, built in 1885, also forms part of the complex, and now serves as part of the Hockey Hall of Fame. It contains portraits of all Hall of Fame inductees, and houses a number of hockey trophies, including the first

Stanley Cup The Stanley Cup (french: La Coupe Stanley) is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, an ...

trophy.

Gallery

Allen Lambert Galleria.jpg, Allen Lambert Galleria, designed by

File:BrookfieldPlaceNight4.jpg, Brookfield Place at night. Intertwining steel arches at Sam Pollock Square 2021.jpg, Intertwining steel arches at Sam Pollock Square Bay Wellington Tower Office Lobby 2021.jpg, Bay Wellington Tower Office Lobby File:Hockey hall of fame former Bank of Montreal in Toronto.jpg, The building now used for the Hall, was a Bank of Montreal branch in the 1890s File:Hockey Hall of Fame, Toronto.jpg, The Hockey Hall of Fame is at the corner of Front and Yonge Streets in

. The same building also houses the

IIHF Hall of Fame The IIHF Hall of Fame is a hall of fame operated by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). It was founded in 1997, and has resided at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto since 1998. Prior to 1997, the IIHF housed exhibits at the Interna ...

References

External links

*
Photos of Brookfield Place

Description of Allen Lambert Galleria

Heritage elements of Brookfield Place
{{Toronto skyscrapers Office buildings completed in 1990 Office buildings completed in 1992 Santiago Calatrava structures Skidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings Skyscrapers in Toronto PATH (Toronto) Skyscraper office buildings in Canada Postmodern architecture in Canada Oxford Properties Brookfield Properties buildings