Strength. Industry. Commerce. A Good Grope?

Build in 1938-39 O'Keefe House housed E.P. Taylor's Canadian Breweries Ltd. The building WAS one of the last examples of an art deco stone building of its type in downtown Toronto. Was, that is, until it succumbed to what I heard once an architect describe, not so nicely, as Toronto's penchant for facadism -- the destruction of buildings under the impression of saving them by keeping a front wall and incorporating it into a modern structure. Ah, see Ernst & Young Tower, TD Centre (stuck into the face of the building is the old TSE facade); whatever grand bank facade that is now INSIDE BCE place, the new apartment complex on church south of Queen with some grand old buildings as entranceways to a highrise, AND this the O'Keefe House facade which is now part of a (admittedly a pretty nice looking new) structure housing Ryerson's Chang school of Con Ed.

The carvings in the building are by the famed architectural carver, Frances Loring. I've admired this particular carving for years, but it was just a few weeks ago that I realized with a bit of a hoot of laughter that it's also a fine example of two men grabbing each other's crotches -- ahem, sandstone hard crotches at that.

"I'll hold your cone, if you stroke my sheaf."