Eye Weekly

Head east from where Bloor Street becomes The Danforth and one moment the pavement is soaring above the Don Valley in midair, the next it's part of dense urban street. The change in topography is unmatched in Toronto. What's most remarkable is how flat and straight the road is throughout these changes – it's as if the road came first, and the Prince Edward Viaduct and Earth rose up to meet it. At 1 Danforth Ave. is the Adult Learning Centre, a mountaintop of modern institutional architecture, surrounded completely by a Don Valley Parkway on-ramp. Various wings of the building lead back to community gardens and a secret pedestrian bridge over to Riverdale Park. In between the school and the ultra-bright Pizza Pizza is a curious building housing the Thessalonikeans Society of Metro Toronto (55 Danforth Ave.), a Greek cultural organization. The building's previous purpose was somewhat more corporal in nature: if you've ever wondered how Toronto built public washrooms in 1921, they did it with style.