1914 – McConkey’s Lunch Building, Queen Street, Toronto

Demolished.

“East of Bowles’ Lunch, on Queen street, is McConkey’s new restaurant of absolute fireproof construction, and designed so as to carry eleven storeys, the remaining ones to be built as desired. The exterior is faced in green and white matt glazed terra cotta, with green Tynus marble used for the pedestals of the large pilasters. The entrance hall, designed similar to the main restaurant, opens directly into it as well as to the second floor, by a marble stairway. Accommodations have been made for one hundred and sixty special chairs with wide service arms. The walls have an apollino green and pink marble dado, five feet high, with marble pilasters every seventeen feet, which carry the heavy beamed ceiling. Above the dado the walls and ceiling are covered with dull glazed white tile, paneled with green lines; in the centre of the wall surface is a painted tile panel set in green frame. The ceiling and beams are protected by six by three inch dull white tiling laid in herring-bone pattern, carried down at the sides to form a large cove.

On the second floor the restaurant will seat at tables one hundred and eighty-five. Extending from the eight-foot dado of fumed oak are heavy pilasters with moulded base and caps of same material reaching to the large cross beams, which in turn are joined by smaller wooden beams, forming spaces for decorative plaster effects. A marble dado seven feet high and tile floor is placed in the ladies’ public lavatory; also in the men’s public toilet located in the basement.”
Construction, August 1915

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