Renderings of the redevelopment plan for Toronto’s College Park and the former 1930s-era Eaton’s College Street department store, designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects.GWL Realty Advisors
“All night, till the rain came, little crowds of the curious stood about guarded entrances, glued eyes to curtain chinks, peered past mystery-shrouding screens,” wrote the unnamed writer in The Globe on Oct. 29, 1930. “Last night was moving night at Eaton’s – an end of old things and a beginning of new – for the big store and the big city it serves.”
The next day, when Timothy Eaton’s grandson, John David Eaton, pulled open the big bronze doors of Eaton’s College Street to allow his mother, Lady (Flora) Eaton, to walk in first on behalf of that big city, the pair would be followed by a “veritable stampede” of Torontonians – 10,000, in fact, would visit on that day to see what the hubbub was about.
At the risk of overstating the point, when the new 600,000-square-foot store opened, it was a watershed moment in Canadian retailing. No longer were department stores about serviceable goods; they were places of culture, where fine art could be displayed or concerts could be held, and in rooms and spaces designed by professionals and artists, all with the aim of turning average Torontonians into aesthetes.
“She had a strong vision for what could be done,” ERA Architect’s Scott Weir says of Lady Eaton, widowed in 1922 when John Craig Eaton died of influenza. “She also had worldly experience; she’d been shopping in Paris, in New York, knew what was happening out there as a cutting-edge thing, and she said, ‘We can bring this back to Toronto and really transform [the city]’ … but also showcasing a Canadian palette of materials, innovation, and so on.”
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It’s true. The Art Deco building, clad in creamy Tyndall limestone from Manitoba, was penned by two prolific and important Canadian firms: Montreal’s Ross and Macdonald (designers of Maple Leaf Gardens with Jack Ryrie and Mackenzie Waters) and Toronto firm Sproatt and Rolph (responsible for the University of Toronto’s Hart House). The two firms had also teamed up to design the Royal York Hotel.
To lend a European flair, however, Lady Eaton commissioned French architect and designer Jacques Carlu (along with Eaton’s staff interior designer René Cera, also French-born) for the famous “Seventh Floor,” which contained the Eaton Auditorium, Foyer and the Round Room (known today as “The Carlu”).
However, as most Torontonians know, only a small part of Lady Eaton’s vision was ever realized. Rather than the 5,000,000-square-foot behemoth – complete with a stepped, wedding cake-shaped 38-storey office tower – only phase one, the 600,000-sq.-ft. store (and Seventh Floor cultural complex) was built before the Great Depression halted the scheme.
However, back then, and still today, what was gifted to the city carries much architectural weight and majesty.
A model of the Eaton’s College Street department as it was planned to look. The Great Depression killed the plan and only the first section was built.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
“We’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” says the mild-manned David Pontarini, one of the founding partners of Hariri Pontarini Architects, the firm responsible for completing Lady Eaton’s scheme almost a century later for present-day owner GWL Realty Advisors (GWLRA). But rather than the New York-style “urban mountain” that was promised (an original model sits in the lobby of 21 College St.), Mr. Pontarini says his inspiration comes from Rockefeller Center, which was designed around the same time (urban legend has it Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room was inspired by Eaton’s Seventh Floor).
“Do smaller, more slender towers, which are more elegant,” the architect says. “That’s the DNA that we’re going back to.”
Indeed, if built as planned, there will be three towers ranging in height from a dizzying 96 storeys (333.3 metres) to 65 storeys (228.1 m) – by comparison, “30 Rock” is 70 storeys (266 m). “And,” continues Mr. Pontarini, “we’re respecting the base.”
Actually, the team, which also includes landscape architecture studio Public Work, is going one further than just respect. Where the existing building tapers from seven to two storeys further south on Yonge Street (and reveals architect Edward I. Richmond’s rather plain College Park Apartments from 1978-79 tucked in behind), Lady Eaton’s full-sized podium will be completed.
Walking with GWLRA’s Daniel Fama, Mr. Weir, Mr. Pontarini, and Public Work co-founder Marc Ryan, Mr. Weir points to the grand entrance at 444 Yonge St. that should’ve had the 38-storey tower behind it and, beyond that, the “base of the column shafts” that fizzle out into nothing. We walk along the south façade and note that Mr. Richmond’s building rises up rather like a sore thumb; the southwest façade is worse, a hodgepodge of connections between architectural eras, and blank façades facing the rather uninspiring park. All will be remedied, however.
“This will all be new, more open, more transparent, more visual connection between inside and outside. … This will all be a completely different expression,” says Mr. Pontarini.
The main staircase in the former 1930s-era Eaton’s College Street department store.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
“There’s a whole stitching that’s going to happen here,” adds Mr. Ryan, “so that this feels like the most animated building-park relationship that we have in Toronto … and [Hariri Pontarini] has got this incredible, glassy atrium, winter garden space, so it’s almost like the relationship of a park and a conservatory.”
All of that, juicy as it is, exists only in fancy renderings, so the rest of our walk is spent enjoying the bits and bobs of Art Deco deliciousness inside: the scalloped and curved marble; the incredible metalwork; those light-up elevator indicators; the typography; the grills that contain a cipher explaining the proportions of the building; and, of course, every single thing about the Carlu.
While it’s impossible to have the new bits (well, they’re larger than just bits!) in place for the building’s centennial in five years, the future of College and Yonge looks very bright for this big city.
“It was intended to be a marquee landmark site for the city and the country,” finishes Mr. Fama. “What we brought forward is our version of what we think it wants to be for the next one hundred years.”