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It was just a little boxed advertisement, tucked away in the left-hand corner of the newspaper page, beside a much bigger one trumpeting the appearance of "Moxie Whitney and His Orchestra" at the Royal York's Imperial Room, but it spoke volumes about the apartment building on Avenue Road.

"A prestige address on Toronto's 'Park Avenue,' " the February, 1957, ad opened, and continued with the warning: "This is the only apartment available in this recently completed building."

It was placed not in the classifieds but in the local news section, by the tenant, presumably, who wanted to sublet because of being "transferred to Montreal." It gushed about the ninth-floor unit's "exceptionally large L-shaped living and dining area," the wall-to-wall broadloom, and the large "patio balcony" overlooking a "beautiful residential area." All of this -- plus elevators, a doorman, underground parking and optional maid service -- could be had for $185 a month.

Not surprisingly, the ad -- and probably the apartment -- was gone the very next day.

Built by developer Kenneth Rotenberg and designed by architect Peter Dickinson in the 1950s, the sleek, ultra-modern high-rise at 561 Avenue Rd. never really had to run tacky classifieds of its own to attract well-heeled tenants, says Mr. Rotenberg, now in his 80s. Perhaps it was the nature of the competitive post-war housing market; perhaps Torontonians were finally warming to alternatives to the single-family home. More likely, it was the urbanity of Mr. Dickinson's design.

Legend has it that when he arrived from Britain in 1950, Mr. Dickinson was so appalled with Toronto's lacklustre architecture that he made it his personal quest to change things for the better. When he died from bowel cancer just shy of his 36th birthday a scant 11 years later, he'd almost done it, too.

Mr. Rotenberg was no stranger to men with this sort of vision. His father, Harry, had been president and chief financial officer of the highly successful construction/engineering firm Yolles and Rotenberg, and had been busy building downtown office towers since the 1920s. But in 1937, when Mr. Rotenberg was a boy of 14, his father passed away, and for a time, the firm had no Rotenberg at the helm.

That changed when Mr. Rotenberg came back from the war in 1946: "I just jumped in and got to know the office building business," he remembers. Problem was, his degree in commerce left him feeling ill-equipped to deal with architects and building codes. "So one of the things I did was I took a course in architecture at Central Tech night school for four years just to give myself a basic grounding in construction," he explains.

When it came time to design a new Yolles and Rotenberg head office at 111 Richmond St. West in the early 1950s, Mr. Rotenberg met the architect that he'd eventually employ to create 561 and 500 Avenue Rd. -- Peter Dickinson, chief designer at Page and Steele.

The 14-storey building at 561 went up in 1956. Mr. Rotenberg set up an independent company to build it, modelling his approach on the success of the independent Yolles venture down the road -- One Benvenuto Place, also a Dickinson design.

"I particularly recall him during the design of [561 Avenue Road] because Page and Steele were just along the street on the north side of St. Clair," he recalls. "Every morning on my way down, I stopped in the office and looked over Peter's shoulder as he proceeded."

Mr. Dickinson is remembered for his Festival of Britain-style -- exemplified by the O'Keefe Centre (now the Hummingbird Centre), Issy Sharp's Inn on the Park and the now-altered-beyond-recognition Park Plaza Hotel addition. His Avenue Road apartment towers were characteristic of that style, exhibiting a breezy modernism that delighted in detail, texture and playful massing, even on paper.

In fact, Mr. Rotenberg still has the architect's original drawings hanging in his Kenair Apartments Ltd. office on the ground floor of 500 Avenue Rd., the building Mr. Dickinson lived in when it opened in 1959.

As he talks about his friend, it's clear that to know the soft-spoken yet persuasive Briton was to love him, and, by extension, to love modern architecture as well. Mr. Rotenberg chokes up when he describes the last time he saw Mr. Dickinson at Mount Sinai Hospital, just before he died.

"We looked out the window. Out to the west you could see quite a vista of the city, and Peter was describing all the wonderful things that he was going to do," he says, removing his glasses to rub his eyes. "But that was characteristic of Peter; he was very committed to his work."

So, too, is Mr. Rotenberg: He keeps 561, 500, and his condo building, The Lonsdale at 619 and 625 Avenue Rd. (designed by Hancock Little and Calvert in the mid-1960s), in top shape. Recently, he spent a million dollars to repoint, repair and reconstruct the brickwork of No. 500, ensuring that the neighbourhood continues to enjoy comparisons with Manhattan's Park Avenue.

But a warning to prospective tenants: It may take a while to find a vacancy in Mr. Rotenberg's neighbourhood.

Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Sunday mornings. Inquiries can be sent to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.com.