The success of the Eaton’s department stores across Canada led to a proposal to build a flagship store at Yonge and College streets.

The new development was to include an income-producing office complex in a giant New York-style skyscraper such as Toronto had never seen. Construction began on the store in 1928 with completion in 1930, but with the onset of the Depression plans changed and the skyscraper was never built.

Nevertheless, the Eaton’s College Street store was a splendid example of elegant and classical Art Deco styling that did not fail to attract a great deal of attention.

The exquisite etching to the right by Samuel Maw (1881-1952), an English architect and artist who lived in Canada from 1912, shows the Yonge Street entrance with its beautiful Roman arch. It gives some idea of the monumentality of the architecture: this was no mundane emporium of merchandise!

Once through this arch, shoppers would find themselves in a gorgeous, streamlined French Art Deco concourse designed by René Cera, a French architect who was a member of the Eaton’s staff.

Shopping was not the only reason to visit the Eaton’s College Street store. Indeed this site was even more renowned for its Seventh Floor public rooms, including the Eaton Auditorium and the Round Room restaurant.

The Eaton Auditorium was a first-class concert hall, where everyone from Artur Rubinstein to Marian Anderson to Glenn Gould performed to audiences of a thousand adoring fans.

It was approached via a large foyer where guests could check coats, purchase tickets and wait for their friends. The whole of the seventh floor was designed by another French architect, Jacques Carlu, assisted by his artist wife Natacha. The design was very sophisticated, using subtle tones of beige, grey and black to tie the suite of public rooms together into a unified whole. Carlu also used the very latest in materials and technology, but with traditional craftsmanship and taste.

Boarded up since 1977, when Eaton’s closed its College Street store, the whole of the seventh floor will soon be opened again to the public. Currently under renovation, the former Auditorium, Round Room and foyer will re-open in May 2003 as the “Carlu”, an event venue and supper club.

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