Unbuilt Hamilton is an exhibition and book that presents the Ambitious City at its most ambitious, exploring unrealized building, planning, and transportation proposals from the early 19th century to the early 21st.
Drawing on archival illustrations, plans, and photographs from Mark Osbaldeston’s forthcoming book, the projects showcased include a magnetically propelled, elevated transit system, a vast mountain war memorial, and a plan from 1917 that would have transformed Ferguson Avenue into the Champs-Élysées. Alternate designs for Jackson Square, Christ’s Church Cathedral, and the Thomas McQuesten High Level Bridge cast new light on familiar landmarks. Unbuilt Hamilton presents the Hamilton that might have been.
A Hamilton native, Mark Osbaldeston’s first book, Unbuilt Toronto, was the basis for an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum and was a finalist for the Toronto Book Awards and the Speaker’s Book Award. It also received a Heritage Toronto Award of Merit, as did its sequel, Unbuilt Toronto 2.
Curated by Mark Osbaldeston
Header image: John Lyle (Canadian 1872-1945), The bridge design in the third-place submission of the architect in the 1927-28 Northwest Entrance competition (detail), Royal Botanical Gardens Archives
