The Globe and Mail

The flames have been out for nearly a century, but Bill Greer still battles to save buildings linked with the greatest fire in Toronto's history. The Toronto Telegram and Minerva buildings, for instance, survived the fire, but were no match for wreckers' balls in later decades, a fact that breaks the hearts of those who care about the city's history and architecture. Minerva was demolished for a parking lot during the early 1960s. Later that decade, the Tely was destroyed to make way for Commerce Court. By the early 1980s, most of the last surviving buildings from the fire zone -- on the southwest corner of Yonge and Wellington Streets -- were threatened by plans for what became BCE Place.