GALLERY ENTRY

Salvation Army National Headquarters

“…At the outset of the project a number of conditions served to moderate a modernist posture:  the inclinations of the client, a diverse programme on a tight site and the desire to contribute to an urban ensemble all helped in making this a hybrid building, both urban fabric and object, traditional and modern….  The exterior of the building is animated by a dialectic between solidity and lightness….  The Salvation Army Headquarters was an unusual example of a high-rise building for an institutional client.”

-Detlef Mertins, “Mountain of Lights,” in Toronto Modern:  Architecture 1945-1965 

The building was demolished in 1998 for an expansion of the Eaton Centre, Toronto’s major urban shopping mall.  The site was commemorated in the naming of the public open space as Salvation Square.