A wide paved plaza between two curved concrete City Hall towers, with a reflecting pool that becomes a skating rink in winter.
What Nathan Phillips Square looks like
The square is a wide paved plaza in front of the towers, paved with two sizes of reinforced concrete slabs. An elevated concrete walkway at the height of the podium roof runs around its perimeter and crosses Queen Street to the Sheraton hotel on the south side. The walkway is closed during the winter months.
Two towers rise 27 storeys on the east and 20 on the west, curving around a saucer-shaped council chamber on a two-storey podium. Their outer walls are precast concrete panels with thin vertical strips of Botticino marble. Viljo Revell designed the complex, which dates from 1961 to 1965.
Three concrete arches, said to recall the form of the towers, span the reflecting pool in the south-east corner. In winter the pool becomes a skating rink, open to the public from November to March. Skate rental and a food pavilion sit on its west side.
A TORONTO sign three metres tall runs across the square, with LED lights that change for holidays and events. Henry Moore's bronze Three-Way Piece No. 2 is known as the Archer. It weighs 2.5 tonnes and stands on a concrete base among the square's sculptures.
stands across Bay Street from the square. Its clock tower was set off centre to give Bay Street a view that ends at it. , a courthouse and office building at 130 Queen Street West, lies on the same street to the west.
Both the Osgoode and Queen subway stations serve the square. Beneath it is one of the world's largest underground parking garages.
Shot in Nathan Phillips Square
The Kidnapping of the President (1980) stages its abduction on the square. Room (2015) shows Joy and Jack ice skating on the winter rink.
The Kidnapping of the President, 1980
The President walks through the crowd at his ceremony here, and the kidnapper cuffs himself to the President before taking him to a rigged truck. The mob, chase and explosion scenes begin on the square as well. Street View
Room, 2015
Played a public ice rink, Akron, Ohio, present day
Joy and Jack go ice skating on the winter rink, which is the square's reflecting pool. The rink opens from November to March. Street View
What Nathan Phillips Square can double for
Daley Plaza in Chicago, Illinois
Chicago's Richard J. Daley Center was finished in 1965 and faces an open granite plaza downtown. It is a civic setting of the same era and scale, and its 31-storey tower is weathering steel rather than pale concrete. The neoclassical City Hall-County Building on the same plaza gives Chicago away in a wide shot. Frame tight on the paving to hold the illusion. Try searching granite civic plaza now.
City Hall Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts
Boston City Hall was finished in 1969 as a concrete building on an open brick plaza, the same decade and the same heavy material. Its nine-storey massing is layered in three tiers rather than curved, so the match holds only in tight frames. The brick paving slopes toward the east. Stepped facades give Boston away in a wide shot. Try searching concrete city hall plaza now.
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