This marketing strategist transformed a bleak office into a 1970s time capsule

In 2024, when author and marketing strategist Stephen Dorsey was looking for an office for his company, the Fractional CMO, he came across a hulking concrete brutalist building filled with medical offices at the corner of Dundas West and Bloor. The intersection was once named the ugliest in Toronto. Still, the rent was cheap—a major draw—and the sterile 1970s office tower sparked something almost Proustian in Dorsey’s imagination.

“When you walk into the lobby, you’re transported to a different time,”says Dorsey, who was born in 1966. “Everything, even the elevator buttons, looks like the 1970s. The moment I stepped into the elevator, I remembered what it felt like as a kid going to the doctor.” He’d found the perfect place to build the office he’d been dreaming of for years: a groovy ’70s time capsule replete with orange-and-brown wallpaper and teak furniture, inspired by his favourite TV show, Mad Men.

Dorsey grew up in Longueuil, a city just outside of Montreal, in a three-bedroom bungalow with shag carpeting, an avocado-green phone and orange checkered wallpaper. “There’s a warm feeling to the furniture and design of the ’70s. Everything is a reminder of a world that is sunnier and happier than the one we live in today,” he says.

He enlisted interior design firm Boychuk Fuller to assist with planning and layout but sourced much of the furniture himself, from antique markets and estate sales. He found the couch in the window of a Little Jamaica furniture store. The sound system, which sits on a teak credenza, is a replica of a vintage model purchased from Tonality Records nearby. On Etsy, he found a working green rotary phone identical to the one he had in his childhood home. When it arrived, he noticed the old number on it had a 514 area code—the same one he had growing up in Quebec.

His immersion in the ’70s extends to his personal life too. Dorsey is currently in the process of writing a memoir tentatively called 11 in 77, about a period of time he refers to as “the Gen X wonder years.” His last book, Black and White, detailed his experiences with systemic racism, and he now feels ready to leave the heavy subject matter behind in favour of something more uplifting. “My nine-year-old son, Kingston, watches Stranger Things and goes, ‘You had it so much better back then.’ I think about things like disco, Jaws, Star Wars and realize, You know what? We actually did.”

Dorsey took possession of the office space in 2024 and changed elements slowly over the course of a full year before his vision came to life. He sourced the groovy patterned wallpaper from Sweden, found a Smith-Corona typewriter on Etsy and bought an orange Moccamaster coffee maker from Amazon that resembles the one from his childhood home. The podcast room, covered in groovy floral decals, is designed to resemble the set of TV shows like The Dating Game or The Merv Griffin Show. On the window, a digital screen alters the street view to look like what one would see from a Manhattan skyscraper rather than a bleak Toronto corner.

Much of the overhead fluorescent lighting was covered up to allow for soft, diffuse lighting from a series of vintage lamps. There’s an old-school water cooler to encourage conversation and a fully stocked teak bar with vintage cocktail glasses. The key for the washroom down the hall is attached to a ’70s hotel keyring, and there’s even a functioning vintage electric can opener in the kitchenette, which Dorsey admits is mostly for show.

A 1973 photograph of Marvin Gaye in a recording studio adorns one wall. Gaye is one of Dorsey’s favourite artists, and the photographer, Jim Britt, happened to be the father of LA-based publicist Melendy Britt, who worked on Dorsey’s first book. When Dorsey saw the portrait on Britt’s website, he asked his publicist for an introduction, and the photographer cut him a friends-and-family deal on the limited-edition signed print.

The nostalgia-tinted office is the product of Dorsey’s desire to create both an escapist fantasy and a stimulating creative environment. “When you walk through the doors, it’s almost like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where it goes from black-and-white to colour,” he says. “I’m definitely more productive when I come here.”

Last year, he hired senior associate Donna MacMullin, who now also works from the office. She appreciates the uniqueness and personality of the space. “It’s a calm place to work,” she says. “There’s good light. It’s quiet because it’s such an old building and there are a lot of vacant offices around it. It feels like a really special hideaway where I can come and be creative.”

For now, the office door is locked and only Fractional CMO clients and anyone else invited in can get a tour. But Dorsey says he’s open to renting the space out for events, photoshoots, podcasts or anything else that might benefit from taking place inside a retro space.

“It’s amazing when you have a vision and can make it come to life,” says Dorsey. “ I’ve gone to lots of meetings in big towers, and they’re not personalized. I just wanted to make it fun to come to work every day.”