One Yonge Street, built in 1970, is a 25 storey building, and is home to Torstar and its flagship newspaper, the Toronto Star. It is 100 metres tall, and is built in the International style. It was built as a replacement to the Old Toronto Star Building, which was located at 80 King Street West. That building was torn down to make room for First Canadian Place.
It is located at 1 Yonge Street at Queens Quay, and marks the foot of what was Highway 11, known informally as "the longest street in the world".
The building also housed the printing presses for the Toronto Star newspaper, until 1997 when a new press centre was opened in Vaughan, Ontario. The finished newspaper content is sent electronically to the plant where the plates are burnt and the paper gets printed and distributed. Editorial content of the newspaper is produced by employees working on the fifth floor. It also has the headquarters of Torstar.
The office space at One Yonge Street is also leased out to a variety of other companies including the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and a dental office.
In August 2006, The Star invited its readers to name the ugliest building in Toronto. Over 20% nominated the Star building. It was criticized for brutalism and being disconnected with the nearby waterfront.
Famous quotes containing the words yonge and/or street:
“the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye—
So priketh hem nature in hir corages—
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)