Features
The square, which sits atop one of the world's largest underground parking garages, is paved predominantly with two sizes of reinforced concrete slabs, amongst which sit a reflecting pool that serves as a skating rink in winter months, a food and skate rental kiosk, a peace garden, and the sculpture Three-Way Piece No. 2 (The Archer) by Henry Moore. Around the perimeter of the piazza runs an elevated concrete walkway, with a connection to the Sheraton Hotel across Queen Street, but which, due to budget limitations, presently remains closed for much of the year. Outside this walkway are treed lawns dotted with various other memorials and monuments, such as Oscar Nemon's statue of Sir Winston Churchill, and a Roman column.
Spanning the reflecting pool are three concrete arches; originally just an architectural feature and support for rink lighting, these were dedicated as the Freedom Arches in 1989, to commemorate those who fought to obtain or defend freedom. At the same time, a piece of the Berlin Wall was placed at the southern base of the central arch.
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Famous quotes containing the word features:
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)