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 ...

’s second Union Station was a passenger rail station located west of York Street at Station Street, south of Front Street in downtown Toronto. It was built by the

Grand Trunk Railway The Grand Trunk Railway (; french: Grand Tronc) was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The rai ...

(GTR) and opened in 1873, replacing the GTR's first Union Station, located at the same location.

History

The first Union Station in Toronto was built by the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) in 1858 at a location just west of the present Union Station train shed. The station consisted of three wooden structures and was initially shared between the Grand Trunk, the

Northern Railway of Canada The Northern Railway of Canada was a railway in the province of Ontario, Canada. It was the first steam railway to enter service in what was then known as Upper Canada. It was eventually acquired by the Grand Trunk Railway, and is therefore a p ...

and the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

, although the railways also built their own stations along the

Toronto waterfront The Toronto waterfront is the lakeshore of Lake Ontario in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It spans 46 kilometres between the mouth of Etobicoke Creek in the west and the Rouge River in the east. History Lake Ontario is a recent lake. ...

. By the 1870s, the old station was no longer adequate. The Grand Trunk built a new Union Station on the same site that opened on July 1, 1873. At the time it was the largest and most opulent railway station in Canada and was designed in the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

/Second Empire style by architect

Thomas Seaton Scott Thomas Seaton Scott (16 August 1826 – 15 or 16 June 1895) was an English-born Canadian architect. Born in Birkenhead, England he immigrated to Canada as a young man first settling in Montreal. He was hired by the Grand Trunk Railway and worke ...

, who later designed Grand Trunk's

Bonaventure Station Bonaventure is a Montreal Metro station in the borough of Ville-Marie in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is operated by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and serves the Orange Line. It opened on February 13, 1967, four months after m ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, Quebec. The builder was John Shedden & Co. and the Chief Engineer was the GTR's E. P. Hannaford. The main entrance and façade faced the harbour facilitating transfers between boat travel on

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...

and the railway. As the Grand Trunk absorbed several smaller railways serving Toronto, passenger trains were increasingly consolidated at Union Station. The arrival of the

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...

in 1884 increased traffic at the facility to over sixty trains a day. In 1892, the railways agreed to expand the station through an extensive rebuilding program and

Edmund Wragge Edmund Wragge (1837 – 26 November 1929) was a British-born and trained engineer who constructed the first common-carrier narrow gauge railways in North America. He was invited back to Britain in 1897 to engineer the difficult approaches of ...

was appointed the project's Chief Engineer. A new three-track train shed was built on the south side of the 1873 station. The most distinctive feature of the redevelopment was a new seven-story office building on Front Street, built of red brick and Credit Valley stone. This was designed in the

Romanesque style Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque style, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 11th century, this later ...

by the Toronto architectural firm of Strickland & Symons. The building's façade closely resembled the

Bradford Gilbert Bradford Lee Gilbert (March 24, 1853 – September 1, 1911) was a nationally active American architect based in New York City. He is known for designing the Tower Building in 1889, the first steel-framed building anywhere and the first skyscr ...

-designed Illinois Central Station in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

that had opened in 1893. An arcade over Station Street connected the new and old sections of the station. The renovated Union Station was officially unveiled and opened to the public on January 1, 1896. The facility was a sprawling complex that never worked very well from either an architectural or an engineering point of view. An 1899 issue of ''Railway and Shipping World'' stated that “the general consensus of opinion is that the Toronto Union is one of the most inconvenient stations in (North) America, expensive to run and unsatisfactory in very many other respects.” By 1900, it was clear a new station was needed. The

Great Toronto Fire of 1904 The Great Fire of Toronto of 1904 destroyed a large section of Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada on April 19, 1904. It was the second such fire for the city in its history. Incident The fire was first spotted at 8:04 p.m., on April 19, 19 ...

swept through the city's warehouse and manufacturing district, including the block immediately east of Union Station bounded by Bay, Front and York Streets. It was decided to build a new Union Station on this site in 1905 but the railways and the city couldn't agree on the design of the facility or how the tracks should be brought into the station. Meanwhile, Union Station continued to serve the people of Toronto, to no one's satisfaction. By 1911, there were about 150 trains and 40,000 people a day using the station. Construction on the new station began in 1915 but was delayed by a wartime shortage of construction workers, financing and building materials as well as the impending bankruptcy of the

Canadian Northern The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Ma ...

and Grand Trunk Railways. The new Union Station headhouse and east and west office wings were completed in 1920, but didn't open to the public for another seven years while the railways and the city continued to argue over the approach tracks. On August 10, 1927, the new Union Station opened and the old station was dismantled over the next year. The clock faces from the centre tower were removed on August 17, 1927 and later given to the town of

Huntsville, Ontario Huntsville is a town in Muskoka. It is located north of Toronto and south of North Bay. Of the three big Muskoka towns, it is the largest by population (21,147 per 2021 census) and land area (710.64 km2). Huntsville is located in the ...

and installed on the town hall building. The 1895 office building on Front Street survived until 1931 when it was demolished. The site is now occupied by the

SkyWalk A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclos ...

pedestrian bridge, a station for the

UP Express The Union Pearson Express (UP Express or UPX) is an airport rail link connecting Union Station in Downtown Toronto to Toronto Pearson International Airport. The UP Express began operation on 6 June 2015, in time for the 2015 Pan American Games. ...

and a commercial office buildings (Citigroup Place and 151 Front West) on Front Street.

Gallery

File:Old Union Station Toronto.jpg, Union Station File:Original Union Station in Toronto.jpg, Union Station Image:Old Union Station, Toronto.jpg , Union Station as it appeared in 1927 File:Original Union Station 1890-1901.jpg, Union Station 1890-1901 File:The new Union Station, interior view, Toronto, 1873.jpg, Sketch of train shed interior File:Union Railway Depot - Toronto, Canada (1894).jpg, 1894 Architectural drawing of the Front Street expansion File:UnionStationTorontoCirca1913.JPG, The Front Street expansion of the station, as seen in 1913

References

External links

Toronto's Union Station - Old Union Station

Toronto’s lost architectural gems—the old Union Station
Railway stations in Canada opened in 1873 Railway stations in Canada opened in 1896 Railway stations closed in 1927 Union Station (1873) Disused railway stations in Canada 1904 fires in North America Clock towers in Canada Demolished buildings and structures in Toronto Union stations in Canada Buildings and structures demolished in 1931

History

Gallery

References

Further reading

External links