If you ever though you’d see the day when the sandstone column holding up this old building on the south east side of Queen St West and Spadina Ave needed replacing – the hour has come! Thanks Google Streetview!
I love Toronto’s old buildings and as I walk I pay close attention to them. For those of you who’ve not been around the Victorian era buildings of Toronto for a while, you might be interested to know that the original sandstone column at 441 Queen Street West is now on life support. Time to say good bye!
The column on life support, your chance to get one last rub of the weakest piece of sandstone in the city!
Over the years I’ve watched the column at this very busy pedestrian intersection erode and rightly so it has to go. Every time I passed, I imagined the building owner was holding on the the past to keep it there as long as possible and was glad someone had the notion to allow us to witness this slow crumbling over so many years. It took on a bit a bit of a mythical status for me – kind of like Toronto’s Blarney Stone I imagined. Though I never touched it for fear of precipitating collapse, I always wondered if it had any magic in it! I mean somebody was rubbing this thing like a goat with a serious itch while no one was looking!
With maybe only 25 square inches of weak sandstone holding up the stone above, it will go soon. I wonder what they’ll put in it’s place… Maybe I should give it a rub to see if there’s some magic in it!