Scotia Plaza is a commercial skyscraper in the city of

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

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 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 tot ...

. It is in the

financial district A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

of the

downtown core The Downtown Core is the historical and downtown centre of the city-state of Singapore and the main commercial area in Singapore excluding reclaimed lands with many integrated resorts such as the Marina Bay Sands, one of the most expensive build ...

bordered 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 ...

on the east, King Street West on the south,

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 Stre ...

on the west, and Adelaide Street West on the north. At , Scotia Plaza is Canada's third tallest skyscraper and the 22nd tallest building in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. It is connected to the

PATH A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desire p ...

network, and contains of office space on 68 floors and 40 retail stores.

Olympia and York Olympia & York (also spelled as Olympia and York, abbreviated as O&Y) was a major international property development firm based in Toronto, Canada. The firm built major financial office complexes including Canary Wharf in London, the World Fina ...

developed the complex as an expansion of the adjacent headquarters of

Scotiabank The Bank of Nova Scotia (french: link=no, Banque de Nouvelle-Écosse), operating as Scotiabank (french: link=no, Banque Scotia), is a Canadian multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. One of Canada ...

and the bank continues to occupy approximately 24 floors of the structure. Olympia and York owned the complex from its completion until the company was liquidated due to overwhelming debt in 1993. Scotiabank led a consortium of banks to purchase the mortgage for Scotia Plaza and over the next five years, it purchased additional shares from its partners until it was the property's majority owner. On January 19, 2012, Scotiabank announced it would sell the iconic building and on May 22, announced a final agreement with

Dundee Real Estate Investment Trust Dream Office REIT (formerly Dundee REIT) is a Canadian real estate investment trust (REIT). History Dundee REIT was formed in 2003, from the commercial properties of Dundee Realty. The remainder of Dundee Realty was taken over by its major s ...

(now Dream Office REIT) and

H&R Real Estate Investment Trust H&R Real Estate Investment Trust is a Canadian open-ended real estate investment trust, specializing in commercial real estate, and based in Toronto, Ontario. It is the third largest REIT in Canada by market capitalization (after RioCan and Choi ...

for $1.27 billion, making it the last of Canada's major banks to divest ownership of its Toronto headquarters property. In 2016, H&R and Dream sold 50% of the building to KingSett Capital and

AIMCo Aimco or Apartment Investment and Management Company is a publicly traded real estate investment trust. As of December 31, 2020, the company owned 27 apartment communities comprising 6,342 apartment units in 12 states and the District of Columb ...

; in 2017, Dream sold its remaining 50% stake in 2017 to the same two companies.

Architecture

The tower incorporates the historic Beaux-Arts Bank of Nova Scotia Building at 44 King Street West, by architects Mathers and Haldenby with Beck and Eadie, built between 1946 and 1951 on the site of

Cawthra House Cawthra House is the name for two homes owned by the Cawthra family. William Cawthra House The first was a mansion completed in 1853 for businessman William Cawthra by Joseph Sheard and William Irving. It is a now site of the Scotia Plaza offi ...

. The , 27-storey structure was designated as significant under the ''

Ontario Heritage Act The ''Ontario Heritage Act'', (the ''Act'') first enacted on March 5, 1975, allows municipalities and the provincial government to designate individual properties and districts in the Province of Ontario, Canada, as being of cultural heritage ...

'' by the City of Toronto in 1975 and was renovated with a historically-sensitive design that includes a 14-

storey A storey (British English) or story (American English) is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are ''storeys'' (UK) and ''stories'' (US). T ...

glass atrium connecting it to the new structure. The atrium houses a large banking hall incorporating architectural features from both the historic and modern components of the complex and includes a large, metal structure referred to as the ''Circle of the Provinces'' which houses the teller services for the Bank of Nova Scotia's main branch.

WZMH Architects WZMH Architects is an architectural firm established in 1961 and based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Originally known as Webb Zerafa Menkès Housden (after Peter Webb, Boris Zerafa, René Menkès, and Warwick Housden) the company's name was changed t ...

designed the modern tower which was built between 1985 and 1988. Excavation for the tower extended , the deepest for a building in Canada's history. The tower consists of 68 storeys above ground and 6 storeys below ground with a

parallelogram In Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is a simple (non- self-intersecting) quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram are of equal length and the opposite angles of a parallelogram are of equa ...

floorplan. Red Napoleon Granite, quarried in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

, cut and polished in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, then imported to Canada, covers much of the exterior and many interior surfaces. Windows are dark tinted glass framed by the granite. The north and south facades follow a step profile giving many floors over 12 desirable ''

corner office A corner office is an office that is located in the corner of a building. Corner offices are considered desirable because they have windows on two exterior walls, as opposed to a typical office with only one window or none at all (windowless office ...

s''. The east and west façades feature a deeply recessed, stepped-chevron extending between floors 56 and 68. The area within the chevron is covered with the same glass in metal frames, creating a visual void. Instead of a steel skeleton to bear structural loads, the tower employs high strength reinforced concrete. The tower's two low-rise wings extend east to 104 Yonge Street and north to 11 Adelaide Street West. The Adelaide wing incorporates the historic façade of the

Wood Gundy Wood Gundy Inc. was a leading Canadian stock brokerage and investment banking firm. Founded in 1905, it was acquired by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in 1988 as it attempted to build an investment banking business. The Wood Gundy name ...

Building, previously located at 40 King Street West, and Yonge Street wing incorporates the Dunfield Building. Essential to the project during construction was maintaining the Bank of Nova Scotia's head office and Toronto Main banking Branch functions with minimal disruption throughout the eight-year, two-phase construction. The tower's project and construction managers were Goldie-Burgess Ltd., followed by W. Tamm Consulting Limited.

's vault of gold and other

bullion Bullion is non-ferrous metal that has been refined to a high standard of elemental purity. The term is ordinarily applied to bulk metal used in the production of coins and especially to precious metals such as gold and silver. It comes from t ...

is below Scotia Plaza. File:Toronto Scoria plaza construction.jpg, Scotia Plaza construction File:Yonge and Front Toronto 2010.jpg, Scotia Plaza in 2010 Scotia Plaza Covered Plaza 2021.jpg, Covered Plaza File:Scotia Plaza Office Lobby 2021.jpg, Office Lobby File:Scotia Plaza Basement Arcade 2021.jpg, Basement Arcade existing Void removed after 2017 File:Derek Michael Besant Waterfall.jpg, ''Waterfall'' (1989), mural by

Derek Michael Besant Derek Michael Besant (born 1950) is a Canadian artist living in Calgary, Alberta who, since the 1980s, has created prints, watercolours and large-scale art, shown in exhibitions and as public art projects in Canada and abroad. Since the mid-199 ...

in the lobby

References

External links

Scotia Plaza
{{Toronto skyscrapers, state=collapsed Bank headquarters in Canada Office buildings completed in 1951 Office buildings completed in 1988 Skyscrapers in Toronto PATH (Toronto) Postmodern architecture in Canada Scotiabank WZMH Architects buildings Skyscraper office buildings in Canada Retail buildings in Canada Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold certified buildings 1988 establishments in Ontario

Architecture

See also

References

External links