I “watch” a lot of TV yet I don’t watch the screen. I’m hard-pressed to sit in front of the screen and do nothing and just absorb the story and scenery. I need to be cooking or cleaning or running or in transit between places. Which is why when NPY and I were watching the first two episodes of new series, Suits, and we even talked about it being filmed in Toronto (standing in for New York City), I forgot all about that conversation.
And then I was watching the fourth episode and there was a sky-ward panning shot to remind the audience about the skyscraping office towers of New York and I spotted my office building! From then on, I paid a lot more attention when there were outdoor and street scenes to see what I could recognize. I visually identified and then confirmed with Wikipedia that the fictional offices of Pearson Hardman are located in one of the newest, fanciest, and shiniest towers in Toronto: the Bay-Adelaide Centre (or BAC).
What’s funny is that Scotia Plaza is right next to BAC and at 68 floors (second tallest skyscraper in Canada) and with a rich red exterior, it is kind of hard to miss if they are filming in a BAC office with a view. In the same episode, Mike and Rachel pose as potential condo buyers and visit a fancy high-rise condo presumably not in the Wall Street area where their office is. But Scotia Plaza, which is right next to their office, Pearson Hardman, is still right there seen through the set of windows at the right!
I figured out that my office towers figure so prominently in the panning shots to suggest the New York setting because they aren’t uniquely Toronto (like the TD Canada Trust Tower) but might even vaguely look like some office buildings in New York. But which one(s)? I figured out that monolithic black steel TD Centre towers resemble both the Seagram Building and One Liberty Plaza, with the former sharing International architectural style with TD Centre. And it’s no wonder! Seagram (1958) and TD (1967-1991) were designed by the same architect, Ludwig Mies van der Roche and, well, I got a big enough dose of architectural design reading the TD Centre’s very logical site and governing order. Another fun fact is that Mies co-designed the Barcelona chair which explains why they are the furniture of choice in my lobby!
So, Suits has been renewed for a second season to premiere in the summer. If they have a similar shooting schedule for their second second as with the first, they will be shooting around BAC, South of Temperance (the bar), and Bay Street from the end of April to mid-August. Maybe I’ll run into a set!
******** This is a blog series complementing my regular blog posts with the original idea was to share our parallel lives, NPY’s and mine, while I’m in Toronto and he’s in Vancouver, 3,400 km away. For me, it’s been pretty fun because I’m this long-time blogger and enjoy repackaging parts of my life in “blog bites”. It’s been more difficult for NPY who hasn’t experienced a change in scenery (although I do not think it is necessary) so I’ll be continuing this with just my photos. I might have something every day. I might not.
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