Runnymede Library a local jewel and national treasure: Hume
When John Lyle designed the Runnymede Library in 1929, he hoped to turn the page on Canadian architecture.
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Except for a brief flurry in the 1960s, cultural nationalism hasn’t mattered to Canadians since the opening decades of the 20th century. Today, of course, the question is moot and therefore mute. The battle for intellectual and creative sovereignty is all but lost, and the silence is deafening. But back in the days of Emily Carr, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, the issue raged.
Toronto architect John Lyle, though not as well known, had much to say — and do — about the matter. Born in Ireland in 1872, he came to Canada as a child. He studied in Hamilton, at Yale University, and later in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts, whose classicism he espoused. After all, this was the architect who designed Union Station and the Royal Alexandra Theatre.
In time, however, Lyle came to believe that this country needed a specifically Canadian architecture, one that reflected Canadian values, history and iconography. He rejected the mindless adoption of European precedents, and insisted we create a cultural language of our own.
When Lyle designed the exquisite Runnymede Library in the late 1920s, it was intended both as an affirmation of Canadianness and as a riposte to the early modernists whose work he felt was anonymous, impersonal and generic.
The library, which is enlivened with carved stone totem poles, Indian heads, beavers, bears and ravens, takes the argument beyond the application of details to the very form of the building, which echoes early Quebec architecture in its steeply pitched roof and dormer windows. Cornelius Kreighoff would have loved it.
Torontonians loved it, too; still do. Though time has not been kind to this stretch of west-end Bloor St., the library remains unsullied by architectural banalities that now surround it. Rest assured no other nearby structure reflects any such cultural angst.
Aside from its sheer beauty, the building is a powerful reminder that architecture is both an art form as well as an economic and mechanical process. In other words, it communicates and tells something about its creators.
This sort of building is forever beyond us now — architecturally, culturally, materially and financially — but it’s part of the contemporary city, passionate, partly eccentric and totally committed to the double notion of library and city as twin pillars of civilization.
Lyle made no secret of the fact he took the job with utmost seriousness. It is a fully realized creation, an essay on the esthetic and the utilitarian, and how the two can be fully integrated.
A 2005 addition by Toronto architect Bruce Stratton gave the facility the extra space it desperately needed. Stratton treated Lyle’s landmark with obvious respect, saving the big moves for the library’s handsome northern extension.
Easily forgotten in the swelter of Toronto’s pumped-up summers is how effortlessly Lyle’s library seems to anticipate winter. Its heavy stone walls and substantial roof speak of a building that welcomes the icy blasts. While denizens of all those glass-clad boxes in the sky shiver, library users will be enjoying the season as they gather round the fireplace.
Interesting, too, how a building designed for the Toronto of a different era can so easily be adapted to modern times. The 80-year-old structure can only be more inviting today than it was in the 1930s when it opened. As much as anything, that’s because it was meant not just for comfort, but to engage us as fully as any book.
The Canada it represents may never have existed, but one wishes it had.
2178 Bloor St. W.
Building type: Library
Year completed: 1929/addition in 2005
Architect: John Lyle, Bruce Stratton (addition)
Style: Canadian Deco
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