Original Photo: 

When Toronto's Old City Hall was designed over a hundred years ago, it was adorned with finely crafted gargoyles that have become among the city's most renowned works. Popularly known as Toronto's third City Hall, this large civic work was designed by Edward James Lennox in the fashionable Richardsonian Romanesque style. When it opened in 1899, Toronto's Old City Hall was among the largest municipal buildings in North America.

As part of the design, Lennox decorated the building with caricatures, grotesques and several gargoyles that were found at various locations on the building exterior. These extraordinary creatures were found sprouting from the north façade, the front entrance turrets, low parts of the structure, and from the clock tower.

This photograph shows several men crouching beneath a gargoyle located near the roof in 1920. Interestingly in March of that year, a section of one of the tower gargoyles broke off, tearing through the roof and nearly missing a draftsman standing below. At a weight of roughly 900 kilograms each, some of the gargoyles didn't fair well when exposed to high winds and cold Toronto weather. Further fragments of the gargoyles occurred in subsequent years, and the four tower gargoyles were removed partly due to safety concerns in 1939.

As part of a twelve year, $35 million restoration of Old City Hall, the original sandstone gargoyles in the tower were replaced with cast bronze grotesques. Lacking sufficient evidence of their early appearance, the new gargoyles were patterned after other gargoyles from the same time period, as well as those still existing on Old City Hall.

Research by Maya Bilbao