Summerhill-North Toronto CPR Station

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Summerhill CPR Station has been preserved, though it is no longer served by passenger trains.

The North Toronto or Summerhill CPR Station is on the east side of Yonge Street in the 1100 block, just south of the more recent Summerhill TTC subway station in Toronto, Canada.

1 Structure
2 History
- 2.1 Restoration
3 Plans
4 See also
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Structure

The station, constructed in the Beaux Arts tradition, consists of a 43-metre (140-foot) clock tower and a three-storey main terminal. The tower is modelled after the Campanile di San Marco in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice. The main terminal gallery has a 11.6-metre (38-foot) high ceiling supported by marble walls and with elegant bronze suspended light fixtures.

The North Toronto Station was the first building in the city to be constructed of Tyndall limestone from Manitoba. The material is noted for its weather resistance, embedded fossils, and dappled beige hues.

The four clock faces, each 2.4 metres (8 feet) in diameter, were always illuminated at night during the station's service life.

[edit] History

The station was built in 1916 by Darling and Pearson to service the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) line running across Toronto. The cornerstone was laid on September 9, 1915, by Mayor Tommy Church, and the station officially opened for passenger service on June 14, 1916 (though it had already been serving in the role since June 4).

When Union Station opened in 1927 and the Great Depression followed shortly thereafter, the North Toronto Station, which served smaller towns in Ontario and was originally meant to augment the bigger station, began to suffer. The last paying passengers filed through the station on September 27, 1930. Brewers' Retail moved into the northern portion of the terminal building in 1931.

The station was re-opened, briefly, at 10:30 a.m. on May 22, 1939 when King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth (mother of Queen Elizabeth II) arrived for the first visit to Toronto by the reigning monarch of Canada. The royal couple left Toronto, though, through Union Station. Shortly after World War II, returning soldiers passed through the station; they were its last rail customers.

[edit] Restoration

Though the former beauty of the station's exterior could be surmised even in its most downtrodden days, much of the station’s elegant interior was hidden behind boardings put up by Brewers' Retail and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO, the government-owned alcohol store which had moved into the southern part of the terminal building in 1940) until the building was restored in 2004 by Woodcliffe Corporation.

The Summerhill station's 43-metre (140-foot) clock tower, modelled on the Campanile di San Marco in Venice.

The clocks had been removed from the tower between 1948 and 1950, allowing pigeons to enter the structure through holes in the clock faces. The first order of business during the restoration of the tower was the removal of approximately 4,000 kg (approximately 9,000 lbs) of desiccated pigeon droppings that had accumulated in its base. The original movements of the clocks themselves were almost completely recovered and restored; now, with the help of GPS signals, they display the time with much greater precision and reliability.

Though it now serves as the Summerhill LCBO outlet — the largest liquor store in Canada — freight trains still run behind the station. During restoration, to break up train-induced vibrations that might otherwise rattle bottles and 'bruise' more expensive merchandise, the concrete floor was impregnated with rubber from discarded automobile tires.

A coffee shop occupies the southwest side, along Yonge Street, and a piazza, called Scrivener Square, with a tipping water fountain, provides a wide public space on the southern aspect.

[edit] Plans

In the mid-1980s, GO Transit first proposed reintroducing passenger service for commuters through North Toronto station in the form of a ‘Midtown’ line allowing commuter traffic to run between the existing Kipling and Agincourt stations without travelling through the city centre. A new transit plan announced by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in 2007 includes a proposal to institute the Midtown line.