This building housed the Toronto Star for more than 50 years. Its next life? A waterfront hotel

Splashed across the front page of the June 17, 1969, edition of the Toronto Star was an enormous rendering of a new 25-storey building to be located at the very bottom of the city: 1 Yonge St. Calling it the “first major step in a development of residential and commercial buildings” that would “eventually” grace the harbour, the paper began making plans to vacate their old Art Deco building at 80 King St. W. (Chapman & Oxley, 1929, and the one cartoonist Joe Shuster first drew as Clark Kent’s workplace) for that sleek, Brutalist tower by Webb Zerafa Menkes when ground broke later that year.

In June, 1971, Mayor William Dennison unveiled the building’s cornerstone as Toronto Star field sales manager Eric Whitfield watched. Mr. Whitfield was one of the more than 100 employees and guests attending that day, and he was quoted as saying he’d also been at the opening of the King Street building in 1929. “The paper is really taking a long view with this building – it’s planning for the future,” he said.