Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum was formally established in 1912 by a group of Torontonians, though construction on the historic Queen’s Park façade was only completed in 1933. Excavation was done by hand, using picks, shovels, and horse-drawn wagons. The modern addition was completed in 2007 by Hariri Pontarini Architects (One Yonge/One Bloor/Massey Tower), though similarly to some of their other projects it received mixed reviews.

A few years ago I snuck up on a soggy winter night, when the scaffolding was sunken in the mud and mist hung in the chilly air. Having another subject would have been great to add some scale to the structure since the usual self-portraits were hard to take while climbing around on the slippery metal slopes. The plan was to try and capture some photos from inside the aging attic, but for once common sense made me think better of it. The planetarium on the south end of the museum is set to be demolished soon giving future opportunities for infiltration.

The first two photos were taken years later from a roof across the street, the Gardiner Museum, where I did try and go inside before setting off alarms throughout the entire building. Whoops.