Richard White
Senior Member
I can say with certainty that you are correct. That is the Royal York end of the tunnel.
The moment I saw your pictures I could tell exactly where and what it was.
I can say with certainty that you are correct. That is the Royal York end of the tunnel.
The moment I saw your pictures I could tell exactly where and what it was.
bearcat
Active Member
Thank you for the find!
Unfortunately looks like the "pizza shop" and the "leather shop" are already gone in this video, and the " leather shop bypass" is in place. See 0:57 in the video.
Dan416
Senior Member
I forgot how awful it was. I don't miss it at all (except for the smell of Cinnabon).
bearcat
Active Member
Could it be this place, "PIzza 2 Go"? I found an old Yelp page with one photo, and it's not really clear from the photo where in Union Station it is. Perhaps this would jog your memory.
Pizza 2 Go - Toronto, ON
2 reviews of PIZZA 2 GO - CLOSED "It's cheapish.. its pizza.. its take out only in the basement of Union station. What do you expect? Well a lot really, if I were to compare it to 2 Bros pizza in NY (http://www.yelp.com/biz/2-bros-pizza-new-york). It's $3.50 for a slice of pepperoni and...
yelp.to
Or perhaps it's a completely different pizza slice place in Union that also close down with renovations.
Richard White
Senior Member
Could it be this place, "PIzza 2 Go"? I found an old Yelp page with one photo, and it's not really clear from the photo where in Union Station it is. Perhaps this would jog your memory.
View attachment 598602
Pizza 2 Go - Toronto, ON
2 reviews of PIZZA 2 GO - CLOSED "It's cheapish.. its pizza.. its take out only in the basement of Union station. What do you expect? Well a lot really, if I were to compare it to 2 Bros pizza in NY (http://www.yelp.com/biz/2-bros-pizza-new-york). It's $3.50 for a slice of pepperoni and...
Or perhaps it's a completely different pizza slice place in Union that also close down with renovations.
That was it!!!
APTA-2048
Senior Member
I’ll have to look back at the disc with the other images I took that day to see if I took any other photos in the area. Will have to dig it up.
I always thought the pizza place was the entrance to the tunnel to the subway. Is that right or is it next to it?
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
No I think you are correct. I believe the Pizza 2 Go location eventually became the subway access tunnel while the Bay Concourse was under construction.
bearcat
Active Member
Okay I found this. The next store east from this photo was a dry cleaners at some point (2007).
And a photo from 2011 from inside Commuters Lounge (on Foursquare).
Richard White
Senior Member
You are thinking the leather shop by-pass hence the name we all gave it.
nfitz
Superstar
I found it useful to get into the RBC building, without having to deal with the crowds of the subway, on a rainy day
Gosh, I haven't been in the retail level of the Royal York since the tunnel closed! But from the other photos, it looks like it's still there. Ironically I spent more time down there before I moved to Toronto - killing time while changing VIA trains at Union. Never seems any time to wander while changing to/from GO and TTC.
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
If we are correct they are one in the same. The entrance to the leather shop by pass used to be the pizza 2 go location which used to be the dry cleaners.
Jonny5
Senior Member
I don't know about the retail level of the Royal York now as I haven't been through there for a long time, but it was quite depressing for a while with empty restaurants (though they may have done room service) and kitschy junk stores for tourists.
The far west end was for a time in the 2000's turned over to an office space for Rosedale Livery, which was basically a taxi company for the very high-paid financial district workers who would have standing travel instructions (ie. pick me up each day at First Canadian Place at 5:00 p.m. and take me hone), or when they would book one off travel in-town. They were all black SUVs with drivers instructed not to speak to the occupant unless spoken to. I assume that business died with Uber coming into town.
Last edited:
bearcat
Active Member
So as per this National Post article from 2011 (https://nationalpost.com/posted-tor...ilers-at-union-are-asked-to-close-doors-early):
"Commuters Bar, with its brightly coloured murals of sports stars and tiled floors and walls, would be a strange fit for the glossy, mall-like environment depicted in architectural renderings of the post-renovation retail concourse.
Canada’s busiest transit hub will be losing several other mainstays. Go-Go Dry Cleaners, next door to Commuters, had been laundering riders’ clothing for about 25 years. It closed the same day as the bar. Nearby is Leather One, a store that has sold luggage and shoes in the station, its owner says, since 1983.
Across the hall was the Amuse-O-Matic, Toronto’s last pinball arcade, whose owners say it opened in 1965, and which closed on April 30."
Based on this I think the "leather shop" was "Leather One" as it's described as being nearby to Commuters. It was still open in 2011 as per the article, as was "Pizza 2 Go" as the photo on Yelp was posted in 2011.
So I think they were both open at the same time, and were not in the same location, but right beside each other.
The old tunnel to the subway was where the "Leather One" was and the pizza place was just west of there in a very narrow unit.
I attached a diagram of where I think things were located. Again, there is some guessing involved and I could be wrong here.
Also as per https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Toronto_Union_Station :
"Before the GO Concourse opened, a connection to the TTC's Union Subway Station was made via a tunnel through the north wall at the northeast corner near the entrance to the GO concourse, where the Leather One store entrance formerly was."
evandyk
Senior Member
I went down there recently to buy a hard copy of the Globe and Mail from the newsstand. Apparently it's really difficult to find a hard copy on Mondays now. None of the stores in the main PATH had one.
nfitz
Superstar
Did they have one there? I'd hope the (increasingly poor) Gateway next to the Hockey Hall of Fame would have one. And I'd be very surprised if the (non-PATH) International News on the south side of Front between Church and Market didn't have it - which has one of the better magazine selections in the city.
You'd think a simple newspaper would be easy enough to find in a train station. Even in the UK it's getting harder to find somewhere with newspapers - but the one place you can count on is train stations; and I didn't have any problems finding newspapers in train stations in Paris.