Designing The CNE's Grand Entrance

Toronto architect Alfred H. Chapman shaped a grand eastern entrance to the Canadian National Exhibition through broader waterfront planning in the early 1920s. Commissioned by the Canadian National Exhibition to plan a major expansion of the fairgrounds and by the Toronto Harbour Commission to design the western waterfront, he also saw his firm, Chapman and Oxley, complete the nearby Sunnyside Amusement Area in 1922 for the Toronto Harbour Commission. Working with engineers from the Toronto Harbour Commission and the City of Toronto, Chapman used landfill to push the lakeshore farther south, making possible the construction of what is now Lake Shore Boulevard. This boulevard was designed to heighten the visual impact of the exhibition grounds' eastern entrance and was crowned in 1927 by Chapman and Oxley's monumental Princes' Gates, while an adjacent plaza called Empire Court was planned but never fully realized.

Ontario · Canada