Renderings of the New St Philip’s Seminary Building

For more than a year, the Toronto Oratory has been engaged in a fund-raising campaign, Renovatio: Rebuild and Renew, towards the goals of replacing two buildings of St. Philip’s Seminary with a safer and more suitable structure, and of establishing an endowment fund to secure the Oratory’s future. The generosity of our donors has brought us close to our benchmark and made it possible to project a starting date for the new seminary building late in May 2019, assuming that the necessary permits will then be in hand. (Anyone who still wishes to contribute to this project, however, is warmly encouraged to inquire about methods of giving: construction costs continually rise with time, and other unexpected expenses with them.)

So as to conform to various requirements of the city of Toronto, designs for the new building have undergone several modifications since the early drawings. A committee composed of several members of the Oratorian community has worked closely with our architect to arrive at these new designs which will shortly be re-submitted to the City to obtain the necessary building permits. Among the main challenges were to re-work the west-facing elevation and the Dunn St. elevation. The covered balconies over the main entrance were modified, reducing it to one walk-out balcony and a “Juliette” balcony on the third floor. Although not featured in the set of renderings here posted, we now also plan, upon the advice of the city architects, to wrap the decorative pilasters and mouldings that constitute the King St. elevation around to the west elevation, thus completing the ensemble and giving the building a more finished look.