Yorkdale is a station on the Yonge-University Spadina line. It is located on William R. Allen Road just south of Highway 401. It opened in 1978 and is named for the nearby Yorkdale Shopping Centre, to which it connects by an enclosed walkway. Connections are available to GO Transit buses (as well as Greyhound and airport shuttles) at Yorkdale Bus Terminal at the south east corner. 1144 parking spaces are also available for commuters.
Yorkdale was designed by Arthur Erickson. The station is above ground, and also above street level. It has two tracks, northbound and southbound. A dramatic vaulted glass roof spans the length of the single centre platform. It terminates symmetrically at escalators and stairs at both ends of the platform, creating the appearance of a glass dome. The interior walls of the station at platform level are unfinished concrete, but artistically cast, and curve over the tracks to form the ceiling. The shape of the windows on these walls recalls the oval windows of subway trains. On the exterior, these concrete walls are clad with stainless steel.
Handrails on stairs leading to the platform are backlit. Platform shelters are unique to the station, designed in the oval shape which dominates many features in the station, with large windows. Like the centre pillars which hold X shaped structural supports, distinctive in Toronto's rapid transit system to the station, they are clad in unpainted metal panels.
Yorkdale station won a Governor General's Award for Architecture in 1982, and is listed as a heritage structure in Toronto's inventory of heritage properties.
The station's glass roof originally featured an artwork by Michael Hayden called Arc en Ciel (French for "rainbow"). This consisted of a large number of variously coloured neon lights that would light in a pattern running along the station in the appropriate direction whenever a train went through. After some years, it stopped working. Because the TTC had not budgeted for its continued maintenance, and at the artist's request, it was removed.
October 8, 2018