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ACO NextGen tours Maple Leaf Gardens

by ERA Architects

This November ERA principal Scott Weir led a Maple Leaf Gardens tour organized by the NextGen group of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO). NextGen is a branch of the ACO that provides educational and professional development opportunities for young architects, students, and heritage enthusiasts.

Maple Leaf Gardens has served as a continuous hub of civic life for the past 80 years and is recognized as a National Historic Site. The Gardens was home to the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey club from 1931 to ‘99, and also hosted a wide variety of large-scale public gatherings, from operas to political rallies. Having been left unused and boarded up for several years, the site has undergone a creative adaptive reuse project and is now home to new facilities for Loblaw’s and Ryerson University.

Scott’s tour led participants through a number of exterior and interior points of interest, discussing the conservation work ERA performed as heritage consultant, which included an extensive “interpretation” program that tells stories of the Gardens through text and images, woven throughout the site.

ERA’s work at the Gardens was recently recognized at the 2012 ACO Awards. Thanks very much to the ACO, Loblaw, Ryerson, Turner Fleischer, and BBB Architects.

To learn more about ACO NextGen, please see the group’s Facebook page.

Images #1 and #3 by NextGen members Hilary Vaillancourt and Emma Jenkin, respectively.

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