2011-01-03

Empress Hotel, 1888-2011

One of the oldest remaining buildings on Yonge street caught fire early this morning.

Conservatively called "massive", the fire has completely gutted the building that has sat vacant since April 2010 after the north wall - formerly visible here - partially collapsed. The building was in danger of being declared a heritage property, which would have forced the landlord to repair it and bring it back up to standards. After this freak accident that seems unlikely to happen.

Out of respect for the age of the building, I also used my rangefinder for some black and white film. I'll see how it came out tomorrow - I could have had it this afternoon if the lab where I get it processed hadn't had the "Fire Line" tape tied to its doorknob.

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I have broken the links to hundreds and hundreds of photos, which will take a long time to repair. The workaround is to replace "photo.matthewpiers" in the link URL with "matthewpiers.smugmug". Awkward, but only temporary.

This is happening because I have revamped matthewpiers dot com. More of what I write and photograph will be going there, so check it out as well.

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