Sources: “Union Station, Front Street, Toronto, Ontario,” Heritage Character Statement, AugToronto Union Station Commemorative Integrity Statement, 2001 Plaque Text, 1979. The station retains many of the original functional features of an early-20th-century railway terminal. It is the largest of the great urban railway stations built in Canada during the early 20th century, and belongs to a precinct of monumental structures that illustrates Toronto’s experiment with the “City Beautiful” movement. The station illustrates the early-20th-century era of vigorous, planned, urban growth, during which railways were expanding and the city of Toronto was becoming a modern metropolis. Beaux-Arts principles are evident in the monumentality of its massing the legibility and axiality of its plan, clearly and rationally expressed on the building’s exterior the processional experience created by the transition through grand interior spaces the use of classical forms for both structural and decorative elements on the exterior and interior of the building the use of durable, high-quality materials and its formal, axial setting. Built as a joint venture between the Grand Trunk Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway, the station was designed by a prominent architectural team that included Montreal architects Ross and Macdonald, CPR architect Hugh Jones, and well-known Toronto architect John Lyle. The successful use of monumental design, classical detailing and formal setting makes Toronto’s Union Station one of the most outstanding examples of Beaux-Arts railway architecture in Canada. It is the finest example in Canada of stations erected in the classical Beaux-Arts during an era of expanding national rail networks and vigorous urban growth.Union Station National Historic Site of Canada was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1975 because:
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