Old City Hall (Toronto)

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A watercolour of the proposed city hall made just prior to its construction.

The Old City Hall

Toronto's Old City Hall was home to its city council from 1899 to 1966 and remains one of the city's most prominent structures. It is at the corner of Queen and Bay Streets, opposite the new City Hall in the centre of downtown Toronto. It has a distinctive clock tower which can be seen the whole length of Bay Street from Front to Queen.

Work on the Romanesque Revival building designed by E.J. Lennox began in 1889. Lennox "signed" his name in scrollwork around the first floor exterior. When it opened on September 18, 1899 it was the largest building in Toronto, and the largest municipal building in North America.

Toronto City Council moved to the new city hall in 1965, and soon after plans were made to start construction of the Toronto Eaton Centre. The original plans called for old City Hall to be knocked down and replaced by a number of skyscrapers, leaving only the cenotaph (or in one plan, the clock tower) in the front. Public outcry forced authorities to abandon these plans, and today the building houses criminal courts of the Ontario Court of Justice as well as municipal courts.

An annex to this building, Manning Chambers, was demolished to make way for the current Toronto City Hall.

At the foot of the front steps on Queen Street is the Cenotaph, erected to honour the dead from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Canadian peacekeeping operations during Remembrance Day ceremonies every November 11.

The building is sometimes used to film movies and television shows, such as This is Wonderland.