The recession of the early 1990s left many vacant or under-leased commercial buildings in the downtown. Office conversions to residential use became a City-supported developer’s rally – in mid-1995, according to the (old) City of Toronto’s Planning Department, there were at least 20 applications for conversions. Eight Wellesley Street East was one of the first conversions of a 1960s era, Miesian, curtain-walled, waffle-slabbed office building to an 81 unit condominium, and among one of the most successful. Directly across from 8 Wellesley Street, at 555 Yonge, there is a similarly proportioned building – a contemporary conversion – that is visually much less satisfying. One wonders whether, if the same developer had bought both, there might have been a twinned gateway to Wellesley Street East and the neighbourhoods beyond.

David Winterton