Eaton vision, soon to be reality

There was a time it was thought that the heart of Toronto's shopping district was inevitably going to be located at Carlton and Yonge.  With so many shopping "districts" in Toronto and the surrounding GTA, it makes it difficult to pin point exactly where the heart of shopping currently resides... Yonge and Dundas? Yorkville? Yorkdale? Queen Street East?

Board members of the T. Eaton Company of many days gone by, (and we are talking a long time ago), 1926 to be exact,  decided unanimously that the city's shopping district was heading north from Queen and Yonge where in the early 1900's you could find just about anything you needed in a 2km radius.  Eatons had a store, a very successful one, which was located on the north west corner of Yonge and Queen.  It started off with 4 employees, and was strictly known for it's dry goods.  The Simpson family had a location of their own directly across the street, which we now know as the The Bay.  These 2 retailers of the day had location, the goods, and the success that made other retailers drool.  Located close to the "financial district" and the heart of the much smaller Toronto of the day,  one would wonder why would you want  to move a successful operation, when the ability to expand your current digs could happen?  Timothy's successor John Eaton wanted bigger, better, grandeur, and a first class department store, and he wanted it at Carlton and Yonge. 

The Eaton corporation purchased the land on the north east corner of Carlton and Yonge up to what is now Alexander Street and over to Church Street.  The land was purchased in 1910 over 3 days in complete secrecy from all the surrounding land owners.  The land sat vacant for years, and after plans had changed to build on the south west corner instead.  The Eaton corporation offered the land to Simpsons, which declined and decided to expand their current location at Yonge and Queen westward to Bay Street.

In 1928, Eaton's announced it was building a seven storey building at what we now know as College Park.  Anyone that has ever been in this architectural beauty can't help but take in the art deco stylings from the ceiling right down to the stair railings.  The original plans for the new Eaton flagship store at the College and Yonge location called for a structure like no other at the time.  This would have been the largest building complexes in the world with four million square feet of space and three million square feet of retail space alone.  There was to be a tower on top of the retail building reaching 32 stories,  but at one time had plans for 75 storeys.  The drawings of this mammoth structure were changed countless times, and scaled down due to the depression, the war, and the overall feeling the building gave to the surrounding area. from 32 storeys to the now 7 storeys.

Eaton's kept both locations it had at Queen and Yonge and College and Yonge, running a shuttle bus between the two locations until the subway opened in 1954.
A confusing story? Somewhat, but it shows how much pull and how successful the Eaton Corporation was in its day, which fell victim to third and fourth generation carelessness for a business they really didn't know how to run anymore.
Now, as for the Aura tower now under construction at Yonge and Gerrard... When completed, this residential tower will be the tallest of its kind in Canada.  At an impressive 75 storeys, and art deco inspired design, it pays homage to the legacy of the Eaton vision that never came to fruition on that site.   There will be retail space, views like no other in the city, and hopefully several elevators to get you from the ground floor to anything over the 50th floor in no time flat.  I think Timothy Eaton would be impressed with this design and hopefully humbled to know that what was once envisioned for this block of Toronto, actually reached the heights once imagined.