Rochdale College, together with nearby Tartu College, brought a characteristic 1960s-style, high-rise dormitory architecture to the northern fringe of the University of Toronto campus – a genre introduced by Tampold and Wells in their earlier Student Family Housing towers at 30 and 35 Charles Street West – but, in Rochdale’s case, history and legend far outstrip anything that architecture might provide. Conceived as a combination of student co-op and “free university” experiment, it quickly descended into an unruly, anarchic state and became notorious as the nexus for Toronto’s counterculture. After innumerable police raids and drug casualties, what remained of Rochdale was closed down in 1975; following extensive renovations, the building was matter-of-factly reborn as a seniors’ apartments in 1979, but the rosy-lensed heart of “the runaway college” in all its colourful legend has, and probably for the better, not died so easily (as evidenced by its numerous subsequent histories and retrospectives, as well as the happily vestigial “Unknown Student” sculpture up front).

It seems paradoxical, in retrospect, that an icon of “anti-establishment” culture was housed in a building that, within the context of 1970s urban reform, must have epitomized bad old “establishment” ways in architecture and urbanism. (For a useful contrast, refer to the adjacent Sussex-Ulster neighbourhood, much of which was reincarnated as student co-op housing in the wake of the urban reform movement.) One can sense that the apparently frank concrete Brutalism of Rochdale highlighted the offbeat harshness as well as the creative fervour of the activities within. Yet, in its current happy afterlife as the Croll Apartments, Rochdale presents a surprisingly urbane aspect. All things considered, its Brutalism is fairly restrained, the offset tower mass (not unlike that of Tampold and Wells’s earlier Charles Street apartments) is attractively proportioned, and the corner plaza can be seen as a positive contribution to the Bloor streetscape. Even the retail-related alterations and fine-tunings over the years don’t seem to have compromised Rochdale’s fundamental lines. We may not build cities or universities like this anymore, but a third of a century after its conception, this oft-mythologized landmark deserves, in its own right, a certain appreciative respect.

Adam Sobolak