[getsmart-l] Jane's Walk (2) -- Globe and Mail

[cco]

A new tour honours the late urbanist and the neighbourhoods she worked to
preserve 


Dave LeBlanc 

>From Friday's GlobAngus Skenee and Mail

Architect and tour leader Angus Skene stands in front of the Annex home of
Jane Jacobs. (photo: DAVE LEBLANC)

 

Today is "Jane Jacobs Day" in Toronto. It is also her birthday - she would
have been 91.

To honour her, I took my dog-eared copy of The Death and Life of Great
American Cities (1961) - her glorious attack on the well-entrenched,
blockbusting school of urban planning - down off the shelf. Its
groundbreaking ideas, manually typed almost a half century ago while
Greenwich Village street life hummed below her window, are still fresh,
contemporary and vital.

And then I thought about what this city might have looked like if she hadn't
come here in 1968.

"Toronto would have had an entirely different future," says Margie Zeidler,
one of the organizers of "Jane's Walk," a collection of free neighbourhood
walking tours happening across the city tomorrow. "I don't think we
understand how blessed we are that this woman chose to come to this city. .
I've heard many people that were immigrants to Toronto say, 'Well, I knew
Jane Jacobs moved here so I figured there had to be something special about
the city.' "

To be sure, her beloved Annex, where she lived until her death in April of
last year, would have never fully healed from the wound the Spadina
Expressway would have opened had it gone ahead. It wouldn't be a haven for
lovers of street life, dog-walkers or university students, or a place for
events such as these walking tours to happen.

Architect Angus Skene has agreed to give me a preview of his walk, "Jane's
'Hood," which will start at 10 a.m. at the entrance to the St. George subway
station. After we meet in the Annex, he gets down on one knee, produces a
piece of blue chalk from his pocket, and begins to sketch Toronto circa
1793, when the British military was sent to settle the land.

"If you can get people on it, you can kind of safeguard it for the Crown,"
he explains. "That's why the city's here in the first place."

Expanding the sidewalk diagram, he shows how folks got around to living way
up here in the Annex by 1885, when the expanding city had to annex farmland
north of Bloor Street. He explains that, originally, strict controls were
placed on land use - no stores, schools or institutions - so the area would
appeal to the upper classes.

Proof is right over his shoulder: the 1890 Gooderham house, now the York
Club. As we walk over to admire its handsome Richardsonian Romanesque
details, Mr. Skene explains that many of the smaller houses in the area
built afterward copied some of its design vocabulary, such as asymmetry,
"massive arches," "Rapunzel" balconies and attention-getting turrets.

He also notes that, unlike the ravine-protected enclave of Rosedale, the
Annex was subject to a watering-down of those early land-use controls.
"There was no way of stopping the city from just ploughing through," he says
of the eventual addition of stores, schools and institutions. "So while this
was built for some of the wealthiest people in the city, it couldn't hold
out. When you've got bridges, you can keep the barbarians on one side," he
laughs.

Walking up and down the Annex's people-filled streets with the pulse of
Bloor never far away, it's easy to understand why Ms. Jacobs loved this
neighbourhood and why, despite her enormous success, she stayed "human" with
a "wonderful sense of humour and a wonderful giggle," says Ms. Zeidler, who
was 10 years-old when she met her.

"She was a cheerleader for a lot of people in terms of them having the
courage to go out and fight for the things they believed in," she adds.

Continuing our walk, as Mr. Skene and I pass Bloor Street United Church and
he reveals the secret of its rather low-key entryway (you'll have to go on
the tour to find out what that is), I ask him if he ever met Ms. Jacobs. He
didn't, he says, but he did read Death and Life when he was 16, which got me
to thinking: Her prose is so conversational, reading it is like talking with
her; to read her is to know her.

En route to her former home, we admire the Victorian fussiness of 37 Madison
Ave., the exuberance of 1960s architect Uno Prii's sculptural apartment
tower at 35 Walmer Rd., and discuss how she'd probably approve of the infill
development going up beside it.

When we reach her house at 69 Albany Ave., I immediately check out the front
porch. It was from here that Ms. Jacobs would sit and watch the world go by,
where she would add her own "eyes on the street," to borrow her famous
phrase.

Thanks to Chris Winter of the Conservation Council of Ontario, who came up
with Jane's Walk, Ms. Zeidler, Mr. Skene and the other walk leaders (check
out www.janeswalk.net <http://www.janeswalk.net/>  for a complete list), we
can celebrate her memory by getting our eyes - and feet - on the street too.

 

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