Cloning isn't easy: Take Dolly the sheep, for example.
Better yet, ask architect Gary Stein, as he stands in the newly expanded, three-level parking garage of the Balmoral, the stately 1929 Tudor apartment building at Balmoral Avenue and Avenue Road.
Stacks of detailed drawings, covered with a film of chalky dust, sit atop cinderblocks; hundreds more fill filing cabinets at his firm's Dupont Street office — a testament to the difficulty of producing the little clone crowning this 30-car, underground garage: A two-storey building made to look as if it's always been there.
Call it a little sister, call it "Balmoral lite," or, as one wag at the city's committee of adjustment christened it, "Mini-Me"— referring to the diminutive character in the Mike Myers spy-movie spoofs. But also call it a minor victory for the neighbourhood, since this could have been yet another glass box.
"I think that's basically the wrong move for this neighbourhood in this situation," says the 46-year-old architect, who has painstakingly produced something that is, in actuality, more of a loving tribute to its elderly six-storey neighbour than an exact reproduction. It's been a great deal more time-consuming and expensive than a modernist box, too, he adds, since almost every stage in the construction presented challenges.
Sourcing the bricks was a "trial and error" process. If there had been only one colour to match, it wouldn't have been so bad, but hues of eggplant, rusty orange and charcoal grey — with the patina of age to boot — are all evident on the original building.
After months of having samples delivered, Mr. Stein found matches from two different manufacturers, but, because the masons couldn't be relied on to randomly select bricks from different skids, "We ended up having the different brickyards come and blend the bricks for us." In addition, the correct coursing and mortar texture had to be figured out so, beside the construction trailer, there remains a "test wall" where Mr. Stein's bricklayers tried various approaches.
No stranger to heritage architecture after a recent conversion of an old warehouse to a film company headquarters on George Street, Mr. Stein found himself climbing ladders to measure the grand old lady's window bays, sills, parapets and other precast ornamentation (yes, they're precast concrete, not carved stone) in order to interpret and "adjust" them for his modern addition.
He also had to locate someone who could reproduce the rough aggregate texture of the precast, since most current-day manufacturers produce a smooth, fake-polished-limestone style of product. Eventually, an "artisan" who usually does fireplaces and other interior details was brought on board.
Early on, it was decided that some of the heavy-duty carved ornamentation would not be reproduced on the new building so as not to draw attention away from the old one.
"You don't want to overplay your hand," explains the 1987 University of Toronto graduate.
Inside the two new 1,800-square-foot units, "true masonry" Rumford fireplaces have been installed, and while it's been decided to forgo the dark wood panelling so beloved in the original Balmoral, there will be reproduction crown moulding put in before the anticipated October unveiling.
The biggest challenge for Mr. Stein and his staff, however, was the construction of the garage, which he describes as "a mathematical exercise." Not only were neighbouring houses mere inches away on the tiny 50-foot lot, the complexity of meeting the required municipal standards for wall clearances and slopes was compounded by the fact that the equipment to construct these was often too large.
"The techniques for building this are the same techniques as if you were building the Air Canada Centre," he explains. "Why it took so long is that we had to do a whole bunch of things by hand because it was too small to get a machine down there."
In the coming months, the Balmoral's giant arch will be hoisted by crane and reinstalled above the garage's entrance, and, since it will now connect the two buildings, it should further "fool the eye" into believing they have always been standing knee-to-shoulder, as will the addition of two smaller-scaled reproductions of the Balmoral's highly distinctive metal lanterns on the new building's newel posts.
And while cloning a building might not be to everyone's taste — especially considering the current fascination with "starchitecture" — on this midtown street it works wonderfully well.
"You have to put your hands in your pocket and get your ego out of doing something like this," Mr. Stein says. "It's more about urban planning and what's appropriate for the street."
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