![Eatonstoronto1920MainStore](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Eatonstoronto1920MainStore.jpg)
Eaton's Annex was a 10-storey building containing both retail and office space in
Downtown
''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, Canada. It opened in January 1913 and was located at the northwest corner of Albert Street and James Street,
west of
Eaton's
The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew ...
Main Store and north of Toronto's (now former)
City Hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...
.
History
![Eatonsannexcommons1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Eatonsannexcommons1.jpg)
By 1900, the Eaton's
department store
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...
owned most of the land within the city blocks bordered by
Yonge Street
Yonge Street (; pronounced "young") is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes.
Once the southernmost leg of provincial Hi ...
,
Queen Street,
Bay Street
Bay Street is a major thoroughfare in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the centre of Toronto's Financial District and is often used by metonymy to refer to Canada's financial services industry since succeeding Montreal's St. James Stree ...
and
Dundas Street
Dundas Street is a major historic arterial road in Ontario, Canada. The road connects the city of Toronto with its western suburbs and several cities in southwestern Ontario. Three provincial highways— 2, 5, and 99—followed long sectio ...
. The land was eventually occupied by the Eaton's Main Store, the Annex building and various Eaton's warehouses and mail-order buildings. The Main Store and the Annex, however, were the only two buildings open to the public. The two buildings were connected by an underground passageway open to both employees and shoppers. It was the first underground pathway in Toronto open to the public, and it is often credited as a historic precursor to Toronto's current downtown
PATH
A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail.
Path or PATH may also refer to:
Physical paths of different types
* Bicycle path
* Bridle path, used by people on horseback
* Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle
* Desire p ...
network.
When the Annex building opened in 1913 as Eaton's House Furnishing Building, it contained Eaton's housewares and furniture departments.
When these departments were moved to the new
College Street store in 1930, the focus of the Annex's retail offerings was shifted to lower-cost items. While the Main Store catered to middle-class budgets, and the College Street store's offerings were more upscale, the Annex store was directed to Toronto's working classes. It offered many of the same departments and types of goods as Eaton's other two Toronto stores, but in cheaper varieties, and with less extensive in-store displays and customer service. As such, the Annex represented one of the first instances in Canada where a traditional, full-line department store operated a separate discount outlet or chain.
The Eaton's Annex and some surrounding warehouses were destroyed by fire on May 9, 1977. The fire was described as "the first of its kind in downtown Toronto since the
Great Fire of 1904". Although it destroyed a number of Eaton's buildings and damaged the nearby
Church of the Holy Trinity, it did not significantly affect the newly constructed first phase of the
Toronto Eaton Centre
The Toronto Eaton Centre (corporately styled as the CF Toronto Eaton Centre since September 2015, and commonly referred to simply as the Eaton Centre) is a shopping mall and office complex in the downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is ...
.
Legacy
Parts of the Annex building survive as
Trinity Square. A portion of the
Bell Trinity Square
Bell Trinity Square is an office complex occupying part of the former site of the historic Eaton's Annex in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The name is a combination of: the name of original and now former occupant Bell Canada; the location of ...
office complex currently occupies the former Annex site. The same underground passage that formerly linked the Annex and the Main Store now connects the Eaton Centre to the Bell Trinity Centre, and it is part of the PATH network.
In honour of this store, a ski run at the
Caledon Ski Club
Caledon Ski Club is a private ski and snowboarding club in the Caledon Hills. It is located just outside the village of Belfountain, about 45 minutes northwest of Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian provinc ...
in
Caledon, Ontario
Caledon (; Canada 2021 Census, 2021 population 76,581) is a town in the Regional Municipality of Peel in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. From a shortened form of Caledonia, the Roman name for North Britain; Caledon is a developing u ...
, was named "Eaton's Annex" after the
Eaton family, who were original members of the private club.
Notes
References
*Belisle, Donica. ''Consuming Producers: Retail Workers and Commodity Culture at Eaton's in Mid-Twentieth-Century Toronto'', Masters Thesis, Department of History,
Queen's University, 2001.
*Nasmith, George G., ''Timothy Eaton'', Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1923.
*Phenix, Patricia, ''Eatonians: The Story of the Family Behind the Family'', Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 2003.
*Santink, Joy L., ''Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store'', Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
*Scribe, The, ''Golden Jubilee 1869–1919: A Book to Commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the T. Eaton Co. Limited'', Toronto: The T. Eaton Co. Limited, 1919.
External links
*
*
{{coord, 43.6537, N, 79.3821, W, display=title
Buildings and structures in Toronto
Department store buildings in Canada
Eaton's