Frank Gehry's Childhood Home to be Demolished

Frank Gehry, designer of the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the newest incarnation of the AGO here in Toronto, is okay with the city demolishing his childhood home.

Gehry, born Ephraim Goldberg, lived at 15 Beverley St. in our downtown core from 1929 through 1947. Like most of our city's gentrified areas, traditional will again give way to modern, though this is not necessarily a bad thing.

When told that his grandparents' home in the formerly Jewish district of Toronto was to be razed in favour of a shiny new condo block, he simply said: "I don't think people should hold up the future for anchors from the past."

Truthfully, there was little to distinguish the home as that of a world-class architect. It’s listed as a heritage site, but does not have an official heritage designation – if it did, perhaps it might have be spared from demolition.

According to blogTO., the condo that’s planned for the site has many positive attributes. From the developer BSAR, the 10-storey condo, called 12 Degrees, has a twisted, crystalline design, unique to most condo structures. The firm, Core Architects, is responsible for several other modern additions to King St. West.

Interestingly, when 15 Beverley was listed as a heritage site, its immediate and identical neighbours, 17 and 19, were pointedly excluded from this designation. All three are fairly nondescript, and have also been altered since their original construction in 1858.

Gehry himself, however, does not seem especially impressed with the proposed building design. In fact, he referred to it as “awful.”

"I hope they don't put a plaque in the lobby that says I lived there," he said. "I would be insulted by that. Who wants a plaque with your name on it in some sh**ty-looking lobby?"