Trader's Bank Building is one of the early skyscrapers in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

.

Designed by Carrère and Hastings

Carrère and Hastings

Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings , located in New York City, was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architecture firms in the United States. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an automobile accident...

 and begun in 1905 at 67 Yonge Street

Yonge Street

Yonge Street is a major arterial route connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. It was formerly listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest street in the world at , and the construction of Yonge Street is designated an "Event of...

, standing at 15 storeys (198 feet) above Yonge and Colborne Streets, it was the tallest building in Toronto and the entire British Commonwealth until the CPR Building was completed in 1913. The Traders Bank Building has a single shaft rising to a roof. It remains as one of North America's few surviving skyscrapers of the early 20th Century.

Construction of the building was marked by several accidents and one fatality. An engineer was scalded by a faulty steam injector in November 1905

The building was innovative in its leasing arrangements. It was the first major Toronto building to introduce the New York system of leasing by the square foot. The building was complete by early December 1906, and the bank shortly moved into its new headquarters.

The building's height was fairly controversial at the time. A number of the city's public intellectuals, and many of its architects, expressed dismay at the prospect of skyscrapers. It would overload the property values and shade the streets, trapping the disease-causing miasmae that still lurked in the public imagination. The Toronto Globe complained that "in the next ten or fifteen years .... The chief retail thorofares will then look like a Colorado canyon". Other editorials on the skyscraper theme compared Toronto to New York:

"but if the skyscraper habit grows, as there is every indication it will … the lower end of Yonge street and the central portion of King street will become dim sunless canyons such as one sees in the financial centre of New York".

There are indications that the tall building changed the customary wind patterns at Yonge & Colborne. There are signs of urban canyon effect

Urban canyon

An urban canyon is an artefact of an urban environment similar to a natural canyon. It is manifested by streets cutting through dense blocks of structures, especially skyscrapers, which causes a canyon effect...

winds by the spring of 1909.

The City Architect in November 1907 promised it would not start a trend. There would be no more skyscrapers he promised, and strict enforcement of the 200 foot height limit. As it turned out, city council was usually persuaded to waive the height limits downtown, and the Traders' Bank was very shortly overtaken by even taller buildings.