Tom Davies Square (french: Place Tom-Davies) is the

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

Greater Sudbury Sudbury, officially the City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population, with a population of 166,004 at the 2021 Canadian Census. By land area, it is the largest in Ontario and the List of the largest cities and to ...

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 ...

. Built in the late 1970s and originally known as Civic Square or 'Place-Civique' in French, the building was part of an

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

movement toward transforming the city's visual image by investing in modern architecture.C.M. Wallace and Ashley Thomson, ''Sudbury: Rail Town to Regional Capital''.

Dundurn Press Dundurn Press is one of the largest Canadian-owned book publishing companies of adult and children's fiction and non-fiction. The company publishes Canadian literature, history, biography, politics and arts. Dundurn has about 2500 books in print, ...

, 1993. . The square consists of a

triangular A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, any three points, when non- collinea ...

main building with its right angle facing the corner of Brady and Paris Streets and a

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

-walled hypoteneuse facing onto an outdoor

plaza A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true geometric square, used for community gatherings. ...

in the centre of the complex. This building contains the city hall proper, its administrative offices and the city council chambers. A

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...

-shaped second building located to the west once contained the Sudbury Public School Board and the Sudbury Public Library's Archives branch. It now houses the headquarters of the

Greater Sudbury Police Service The Greater Sudbury Police Service is the police force for the municipality of Greater Sudbury, Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but ...

. Another similar shaped but taller building housing provincial government offices was added to the northeast corner of the site several years later. Completing the square is a fourth building in similar materials, built in a rectangular shape with modern

colonnade In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...

breezeway A breezeway is an architectural feature similar to a hallway that allows the passage of a breeze between structures to accommodate high winds, allow aeration, or provide aesthetic design variation. It is a pedestrian walkway because it is intende ...

, housing

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in t ...

offices. The complex was designed by the local architecture firm Townend, Stefura, Baleshta and Nicholls, with the lead architects being Arthur Townend and John Stefura. Prior to the completion of the current facility, the former city hall was so overcrowded that the civic administration was operating out of several different downtown office buildings, and council meetings had to be held in the auditorium of the Sudbury Public Library's Mackenzie branch. The facility was renamed in 1997 in honour of Tom Davies, the retiring chairman of the

Regional Municipality of Sudbury The Regional Municipality of Sudbury was a Regional Municipality that existed in Ontario, Canada, from 1973 to 2000, and was primarily centred on the city of Sudbury. It served as an upper-tier level of municipal government, aggregating municipal ...

. In 2017,

Greater Sudbury City Council Greater Sudbury City Council (french: Conseil municipal du Grand Sudbury) is the governing body of the City of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The council consists of the mayor plus a twelve-person council. The city is divided into twelve wards; ...

began accepting bids for a construction project to redesign the complex's central plaza,"Bids for Tom Davies courtyard redesign come in millions over budget"
CBC Northern Ontario, April 3, 2017. although all bids received came in significantly higher than the city had budgeted for the project. The city allocated the additional funding necessary, and the project was completed in 2019."Tom Davies Square Courtyard transformation nearing completion"
'' Northern Life'', May 3, 2019.

References

{{coord, 46.49021, N, 80.99018, W, source:placeopedia, display=title City and town halls in Ontario Buildings and structures in Greater Sudbury Municipal government of Greater Sudbury 1977 establishments in Ontario Government buildings completed in 1977