Toronto’s Old City Hall is a chance to think big, but timid bureaucracy is stifling its potential

On a recent Friday, five geraniums drooped in the heat of Old City Hall’s courtyard. The city has cracked open the 1899 building for five hours each Friday, so a few locals wandered across the asphalt, unsure what they were meant to find.

What they saw looked improvised: a couple of tables, security guards, plastic pots of flowers. It looked like someone had dashed into Metro with a hundred dollars and called it “placemaking.” This is not animation; it is civic drift, dressed up in grocery-store geraniums.

Can the city make this place something better? Of course. It’s a time capsule of Victorian Toronto studded with marble staircases, bronze railings and sculpted grotesques. It overflows with atmosphere.