The Honest Ed’s sign will be saved. Or part of it anyway.
Just as news was circulating that the thousands of light bulbs which are such a familiar part of Bloor Street West — they are among the most familiar, photographed and filmed artifacts in Toronto — might likely be headed for landfill, David Mirvish announced he plans to take the 30-foot by 60-foot section most instantly recognizable and preserve it.
Fittingly enough, the plan is to affix it to the theatre near Yonge and Dundas that bear’s Ed Mirvish’s name, albeit to the back of the building, facing onto Victoria Street, where the stage doors are.
For many who were worried this piece of illuminated Toronto iconography would disappear forever, this is good news.
The move needs approval from city council, but that should be a no-brainer; it’s not just a note-perfect tribute to the man and his life’s work, but a contribution to a growing Toronto trend.
This city did not invent architectural facadism, but we’ve become particularly famous for it.
It’s the practice of redevelopers saving parts — often the facades — of historic buildings and constructing new buildings around or on top of them.
When the members of the pointy-glasses crowd talks about this, they express contempt for a gesture toward history that can sometimes seem neither to preserve heritage, nor fit with the new buildings.
There are good and bad examples, just as there are beautiful and hideous buildings of every vintage, but, on the whole, I like it.
Yes, sometimes I’d prefer that a whole building, or collection of buildings, be adapted and used anew in something close to its original state, such as is the case (in the extreme) of the Distillery District.
But, just as often, the blend of old and new on one site shows a city evolving: for example, the old bank building that houses much of the Hockey Hall of Fame inside BCE place.
Sometimes, things should be preserved, such as a museum (Hello, Casa Loma!). Sometimes, they can be reused for a new purpose (Come on down, Old City Hall!). But where there are good reasons to redevelop, sometimes it’s just worth preserving a fragment of what was there, as a kind of memento.
Which leads us to a new Toronto twist we’ve been seeing recently; you could call it “sign-ism.”
It began when Ryerson University bowed to pressure from local historical types and music buffs to preserve the giant neon spinning discs of Sam the Record Man that had defined the Yonge Street Strip through the rock ’n’ roll era.
They promised to reinstall them in place, then totally broke that promise, but further promised to have them installed at Yonge and Dundas nearby.
We’re still waiting.
But the idea seems to have caught on; as I noted a couple of years ago, when the El Mocambo seemed as though it was destined to close for good, activists were calling for its neon sign to be preserved. (The bar, itself, wound up being saved, instead).
Even then, there was noise at city hall to save the Honest Ed’s sign, and recently we’ve heard that, among the facets of the Silver Dollar Room that cannot be changed by the developer, the familiar lights of its sign are one.
Maybe there’s a danger if this sign fetishism becomes too established, of seeing a city come to be dominated by advertisements for dead businesses, confusingly preserving the actual signs of what used to be at the expense of what is happening now.
But that problem is a long way off.
And in the Honest Ed’s sign’s case, we have a better fit of past and present than usual.
The sign, itself, has always been a whole lot of showbiz, sort of a tribute to Las Vegas or Broadway.
And now it will be hanging on a theatre that mounts Broadway-style musical productions.
As David Mirvish’s announcement notes, it was a sign advertising the retail business Ed Mirvish ran that gave him the money to launch his theatres, and now it will be married to the theatre that carries on this tradition.
It bears Ed Mirvish’s nickname, and it will hang on the back of the place that bears his proper name.
Within sight of Dundas Square, it’s already in a place known for bright lights and flashy advertising.
It’s a sign so peculiar and blinking and brazen, it’s hard to imagine it fitting in well anywhere, but the combination of form and function, past and present, and tribute and tease in this proposal makes it just about a perfect fit.
Now, when can we expect to see that Sam the Record Man sign . . . ?
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