College Park (Toronto)

Eaton's College Street

Eaton's began secretly assembling land at Yonge and College Streets in 1910 for a new store. The First World War put the plans on hold, but Eaton's retained the land. During the 1920s, plans were made to shift all Eaton's operations from their existing location at Yonge Street and Queen Street West to the College Street site. Eaton's even offered to sell part of its landholdings to its main competitor, Simpson's, in an effort to shift the heart of Toronto retailing northward and to preserve the synergy created by having two retail giants next to one another. The effort was unsuccessful, and Simpson's chose instead to expand its Queen Street store.

In 1928, Eaton's announced plans for the largest retail and office complex in the world to be constructed on the site, featuring 5,000,000 square feet (465,000 square metres) of retail space and a 38-storey 1920s era skyscraper. Just as the war had intervened a decade earlier, however, the Great Depression curtailed the grandiose plans for the site. The first phase of the project, a department store of 600,000 square feet (56,000 square metres), was the only part of the complex that was ever built. Nevertheless, foundation pillars, 10 feet in diameter, were driven 30 feet down into bedrock during the construction of the first phase to accommodate the tower. On October 30, 1930, the new store was opened by Lady Eaton, the matriarch of the Eaton family, and her son John David Eaton, the future president of the company.

Even though the rest of the complex was never constructed, the new store was nonetheless a true retail palace, the likes of which had never been seen in Toronto, and was a testament to the retail dominance of the Eaton's chain at that time. Tyndall limestone was used for the imposing exterior. Accentuating the Tyndall limestone was granite and a corrosion-resistant alloy of nickel and copper (Shoemaker, and Smith 22) called monel metal. The monel metal was used copiously on the building as trim and in panels along the window and door frames. In addition to this metal trim, cast stone and carvings acted as detailed decorative elements on the façade (Morawetz 5). Marble was imported from Europe for the interior columns and colonnade. Lady Eaton arranged for two entire rooms to be removed from two manor houses in England and reassembled in the furniture department of the College Street store. The French architect Jacques Carlu (who later designed the Rainbow Room in New York City and the Eaton's Ninth Floor (or the "9ième") in Montreal), was retained to design the interior of the Eaton's Seventh Floor, including the 1300-seat Eaton Auditorium and the elegant Round Room restaurant. Itself an Art Moderne masterpiece, the Eaton's Seventh Floor was at the heart of Toronto's cultural life for many years. The Auditorium played host to the major performers of its day, including Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and the National Ballet of Canada. Canada's own Glenn Gould, fond of the Auditorium's excellent acoustics, used the hall for a number of his recordings.

Classified specifically as a stripped classical art deco style, Eaton's College Street emphasized symmetry in the plan and rhythm in the arrangement of the fenestration, doors, and pilasters. A distinct repetitive pattern can be distinguished with the windows and pilasters as well as with the arrangement of large entrances. There are three small windows on the upper levels between each pilaster, and three large shop windows between each entrance. The original Eaton's College Street was designed with large shop windows on the floor level to attract window shoppers and pedestrians. The floor level also highlights another classical art deco characteristic of having a large distinctive base. Aside from the oversized windows, on Eaton's College Street, the base was made even more prominent through the use of the granite and stone carvings framing it. On higher levels however, the fenestration became long vertical strips separated by large pilasters which highlighted the verticality of the structure as opposed to its mass (another distinguishing feature of art deco buildings) (Morawetz 46).

The pilasters of the upper levels have fluting and capitals of ionic composition and support a rather large entablature. Art Deco architecture, well known for its geometric patterns and ornamentation is demonstrated in the detailed entablature, with a sculpted architrave, dentils on the cornice, and a monel metal trim along the top. Along the frieze are round ornamental metal pieces placed in a rhythmic order between the pilasters. Each entrance is flanked by a slightly protruding cast stone frame decorated with sculpted square shapes, dentils and bordered by a spiral ribbon-shaped cast stone. The monel metal trim on the window frames represents the art deco style of having natural shapes such as flowers or sunbursts, as influenced from the Egyptian and Mayan styles (New York Architecture). As can be observed, the trim is indeed a very natural organic shape. However these features are only present on the Yonge Street and College Street frontage. The back of the building, facing the park, while still maintaining a rather symmetrical and repetitive fenestration pattern, is sparse on decoration and entrances have been kept rather nondescript.

The focus of Eaton's College Street, as the store was known, was on furnishings and housewares, although the latter were very broadly defined. In fact, Eaton's boasted that the store was "the largest furniture and house furnishings store in the British Empire". The larger Eaton's Main Store, only a few blocks south on Yonge Street, was never closed, as had been originally intended in the 1920s, and Eaton's ran a shuttle bus between the two stores for two decades until the Toronto subway opened in 1954.

Life after Eaton's

With the opening of the Toronto Eaton Centre in 1977, the Eaton's Main Store and Eaton's College Street were both closed in favour of the new Eaton's flagship store at Yonge Street and Dundas Street. Fortunately, the College Street store was spared the fate of the former Main Store, which was demolished to make way for the second phase of the Eaton Centre construction. Instead, the College Street building was sold to new owners, and was rechristened College Park. The lower floors of the store were converted to a shopping mall of small, high-end boutiques and a subway concourse (with the marble and Art Deco stylings of the Eaton's store carefully preserved), and the upper floors were converted to nondescript office space.

Although the new owners had originally agreed to preserve the Seventh Floor, they eventually determined that its preservation and restoration was not financially feasible, and they applied for a demolition permit to convert the entire floor to office accommodation. After a lengthy court battle with the City of Toronto, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled in 1986 that the 1975 designation of the building under the Ontario Heritage Act protected the Seventh Floor from demolition. (See Re Toronto College Street Centre Ltd. and City of Toronto et al. (1986), 56 O.R. (2d) 522 (Ont. C.A.) Despite several changes in building ownership, and the efforts of local heritage advocates, the Seventh Floor was sealed off for many years and allowed to deteriorate; although it was protected by law, there was no legal obligation to use or restore it. After an extensive renovation program to restore the original art deco architecture, the space reopened in 2003 as The Carlu, an event and convention venue.

Over time, College Park was expanded through the addition of a residential apartment building in 1978 and a 30-storey glass and steel office building in 1984 (which housed the offices of the Maclean-Hunter media empire). Although neither addition was architecturally sympathetic to the original building, the heritage and architectural integrity of the former Eaton's store was preserved. The former Maclean-Hunter addition now serves as the head offices of the provincial educational broadcaster TFO as well as housing offices of several government of Ontario ministries. The retail levels have two grocery stores (Metro and Sobey's) plus a Winners store.

While officially the name College Park applies only to the building itself, it is often applied by the general public to the larger block that surrounds it. The adjacent Barbara Ann Scott Park greenspace is commonly referred to as College Park rather than by its formal name, and the newer Aura condominium complex at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard is widely marketed under the name "Aura at College Park".