[URBAN NOTE] "The half-built relics of nixed Toronto skyscrapers"
At Spacing Toronto, Chris Bateman writes, with abundant photos and illustrations, about Toronto's half-completed and cancelled skyscrapers. There's a few.
In 1914, John Eaton, the third son of retail magnate Timothy Eaton, began preparing plans for a massive expansion of his family’s empire.
Aged 38, John had spent almost his entire working life in various positions inside the T. Eaton Company, many of them in senior management alongside his father.
When his father died in 1907, John inherited the company and took over as president. Under his leadership, the department store based at Queen and Yonge would-he hoped-go national.
The first T. Eaton store outside Ontario opened in Winnipeg in 1905, and John directed the company to begin secretly assembling land for a massive new Toronto flagship store at Yonge and Carlton streets in 1912.
Designed by renowned Chicago architect Daniel Burnham (he and his partner John Root designed much of the World’s Columbian Exposition,) the initial plans for the store were magnificent in scale: a 10-storey Beaux Arts structure with a curved frontage and massive skylit central atrium.
The company got as far as issuing the contracts for the structural steel when the First World War started in July, 1914. John Eaton ordered the project immediately halted as many of his workers joined the Canadian armed forces and steel became a vital resource in the war effort.
It wouldn’t be the only time Eaton’s College Street store would be a victim of unfortunate timing.
In 1914, John Eaton, the third son of retail magnate Timothy Eaton, began preparing plans for a massive expansion of his family’s empire.
Aged 38, John had spent almost his entire working life in various positions inside the T. Eaton Company, many of them in senior management alongside his father.
When his father died in 1907, John inherited the company and took over as president. Under his leadership, the department store based at Queen and Yonge would-he hoped-go national.
The first T. Eaton store outside Ontario opened in Winnipeg in 1905, and John directed the company to begin secretly assembling land for a massive new Toronto flagship store at Yonge and Carlton streets in 1912.
Designed by renowned Chicago architect Daniel Burnham (he and his partner John Root designed much of the World’s Columbian Exposition,) the initial plans for the store were magnificent in scale: a 10-storey Beaux Arts structure with a curved frontage and massive skylit central atrium.
The company got as far as issuing the contracts for the structural steel when the First World War started in July, 1914. John Eaton ordered the project immediately halted as many of his workers joined the Canadian armed forces and steel became a vital resource in the war effort.
It wouldn’t be the only time Eaton’s College Street store would be a victim of unfortunate timing.