“I took a napkin out and I drew the three legs of the tower on it,” he once recalled, “And I said, ‘We’ve got to bring them together at the base and make it into a single entity, and then let it blossom out.”

On a flight back from Calgary, Andrews sketched out what he had learned. But the developers were unhappy with the design and wanted something with a single stem, such as the Calgary Tower.Īndrews and a colleague, Michael Monk, visited the Empire State Building, Chicago’s Sears Tower, the Seattle Space Needle and the Calgary Tower on a research trip. In its initial design, unveiled in December 1968, the CN Tower had three tubular legs which were connected to each other by enclosed bridges. They wanted to build offices, apartments, a hotel, a transportation hub, and a trade and cultural complex on a 170-acre site then home to a sprawling railway yard.ĬBC executive Howard Hilliard approached Andrews in May 1967 and told him he wanted to build a large transmission tower as part of the project – one high enough to beam a signal into every home in the region.Īndrews called it a “wild and wonderful idea.” The tower plan was expanded to include a bar, a restaurant and a viewing area for tourists. The Metro Centre project was a plan to redevelop a huge plot of land in downtown Toronto owned by CN and CP Rail. In 1967, Andrews was hired as director of the Metro Centre project, which would prove to be both the highlight and the lowlight of his long career. Andrews agreed to work on the feasibility study that ultimately paved the way for Habitat’s construction. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation asked him to meet with a young architect, Moshe Safdie, and offer an opinion on his proposed housing exhibit for Expo 67, Habitat. In 1963, he launched his own firm, Community Development Consultants, to shepherd large, complex development projects through the planning and approval stages. Based on its success, he was brought in as a consultant on the company’s Century City project in Los Angeles. In that role, at 28, he was project director of Toronto’s Flemingdon Park, a large-scale housing and commercial development. Zeckendorf hired him on the spot as general manager of his Canadian housing and development division. He later travelled to New York City to ask famed developer William Zeckendorf for a job at his firm, Webb and Knapp.

He completed his first housing project at 23. He worked for the Department of National Defence, planning residential facilities on army bases, then as an estimator and designer for construction companies in Ottawa and Toronto. He built his first home at the age of 16.Īfter high school, Andrews enrolled as an architect’s apprentice, but returned to construction when the government eliminated the apprenticeship program. He dreamt of being an architect.Īndrews grew up in the construction business, working for his brothers’ firm, Andrews Brothers Construction. In school, while other boys doodled hockey goalies and cartoon characters, Andrews sketched houses. He loved to fashion towers from wooden blocks. His father was a federal government accountant.Īs a boy, Bud was handed the nickname he would carry all his life by a neighbour who thought he was as cute as a rosebud. “He lived life big and he did what made him really, really happy,” said Debbie Sherwin, one of his three children.Īndrews’ partner, Anne Cameron, called him “a most remarkable man.” “He was a good listener and extremely good-natured, but he had very definite ideas about the right way to do things,” she said.īud Andrews grew up on Holmwood Avenue, the second youngest in a family of 11 children. It would inspire the tower’s elegant design.Īndrews died last month in an Ottawa hospital from heart failure. In the 1960s and 70s, he worked on era-defining projects such as Habitat 67 in Montreal and Century City in Los Angeles.įamously, in the early 70s, Andrews sketched out what the CN Tower should look like on a martini napkin. The highest observation deck in the Western Hemisphere, SkyPod is nicknamed “Bud’s Bubble” in honour of Andrews, the Ottawa developer and project manager who played a key role in the building of the CN Tower.Īndrews grew up in the Glebe, graduated from Ottawa Tech High School, apprenticed as an architect, and made his name as a project manager and developer. Some of Stewart “Bud” Andrews’ friends recently deposited a few of his ashes on the CN Tower’s SkyPod, the observation deck 447 metres above downtown Toronto.

Skypod cn tower