Once Upon A City: Yorkdale Mall brought shopping into the 20th century
When Yorkdale Mall opened in 1964 it was a shopping experience Canadians had never seen before
By
JANICE BRADBEERSpecial to the Star
Thu., Sept. 15, 2016
The crowded corridors were “like the Friday before Christmas,” when the new Yorkdale Shopping Centre first opened its doors on a cold and cloudy Feb. 26, 1964.
The crush of visitors that Wednesday was so bad, the Toronto Daily Star reported, that a 60-year-old man stepped into a six-foot square plate glass window after mistaking it for a door. The glass shattered and he disappeared into the crowd, rubbing only his nose.
What compelled shoppers to leave their warm homes, hop into their Ramblers, and drive to the rural outskirts at Dufferin St. south of Highway 401 in -9C degree weather?
“The first impression you get is this is shopping in the 20th century,” the Star said about Yorkdale — possibly one explanation for the mall’s popularity, which billed itself as “The new uptown of Toronto.”
Yorkdale Shopping Centre debuted as the largest enclosed mall in Canada and bigger than the original size of any mall in the world. It offered one-third of a mile of shops and services (1.2 million square feet), free outdoor parking and was open from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily and Saturdays until 6 p.m.
Toronto had neighbourhood strip malls but nothing like this. Yorkdale was the first Canadian mall to feature two major retailers — Eaton’s and Simpson’s — under one roof, thus dispensing with the parking headaches and congestion of downtown shopping.
A 1958 artistic rendering of how Yorkdale Mall might look.
Outside the weather may have been frightful, but inside delighted shoppers strolled around the wide, terraced promenade amid palm trees and tropical plants, with the thermostat set at a comfortable year-round temperature of 22C.
Eaton’s anchored the mall to the east and Simpson’s to the west.
An enormous Dominion grocery store — the chain known for the jingle “it’s mainly because of the meat” — was at the south of the L-shaped mall. Grocery orders in the “jet-aged supermarket” would travel underground via a conveyor belt, where customers would pick them up at a special station.
A bakery, open kitchen with take-home food and a restaurant were also on the premises.
“The store will feature such delicacies as freshly caught West Coast salmon, oyster, Alaska crab and Arctic char flown to Toronto by jet aircraft,” the Star said.
Yorkdale was home to 61 shops and services. (Not all of them were leased by opening day.) Each showcased the newest in sliding door technology, which opened the store for business and then closed it for some late-night window shopping
Merchants encouraged the lady of the household to say “charge it” throughout the shopping centre.
Simpsons Court, part of the Yorkdale Shopping Centre at Highway 401 and the Allen Expressway, has a leaping fountain, which adds a soothing rush of water in a vast and coffered hall. But Yorkdale's buildings are non architecture, Leon Whiteson says.
The Star estimated 100,000 people visited the shops in “sumptuous new Yorkdale,” on opening day. Crowds lined up at the doors prior to the 9:30 a.m. grand opening. By mid-morning, the four parking lots with 6,500 free spaces were filled. At 2:30 p.m. hundreds of drivers were prowling the lot looking for an elusive spot.
With the snip of an 18-inch-wide ribbon, Miss Canada, Carol Anne Balmer, officially declared Yorkdale Shopping Centre open at noon. Then 350 invited VIPS sat down to a lobster and cocktails lunch.
But the “really important people, the customers, had pronounced the $40 million complex a success,” the Star reported the next day.
“Desks were jingling in the biggest Dominion store ever built as they kept 17 checkouts busy. Eaton’s and Simpson’s and others were equally busy.”
A stroll back in 1964 would find you passing shops and services “in some of the best-known names in Metro Toronto retailing,” said the Star.
These included Hunts Bakery, Laura Secord Candy, Coles Bookstore, Jordan Wines, Reitman’s, Henry Birks and Sons Jewellers and Eddie Black’s Camera Store. There was even a dual auditorium-theatre showing different movies, a first for Toronto, with seating for more than 1,200 patrons.
Retailers advertised specials in the Toronto Daily Star surrounding the opening. Simpson’s boasted about its “four, airy, light-filled floors, including a budget floor on the lower level.”
March 9, 1966: $12 million 'Bowl of spaghetti serves only Yorkdale plaza, ' says MPP. NDP's Fred Young wants Spadina Extension hurried up to link downtown with this Highway 401 interchange. (HAROLD WHYTE)
Patrons could “relax over a sightseeing luncheon in Simpson’s Court restaurant, overlooking the majestic three-storey high courtyard interior.”
An Eaton’s ad tempted shoppers to “luxuriate in the heady atmosphere of fashion, dedicated to the feminine heart of all ages” — although the store was quick to point out children and men weren’t forgotten. It underscored the mall’s unique features, including the convenience of entering Eaton’s from inside the mall.
And “the highlight of shopping” at Yorkdale would be lunch or dinner at Eaton’s Vista restaurant, which featured floor-to-ceiling glass walls and drapes that closed automatically when the sun reached a certain intensity.
It was the T. Eaton Company that got the ball rolling on the construction of Yorkdale Shopping Centre. The retail giant bought a 40-hectare site in North York Township at Dufferin St. and Highway 401 in the mid-1950s — considered the suburbs at the time. Not to be outdone by its Yonge St. rival, Simpson’s then purchased an eight-hectare site to the east in 1958.
A plan to build the complex was announced later that year. The decision was predicated on the construction of the Spadina Expressway (part of the proposed highway is now Allen Road) as the developers refused to proceed until the expressway was approved for construction.
The mall’s design was awarded to the Seattle, WA. firm of John Graham Consultants, with the exception of the Simpson’s store, which was designed by John Andrews of John B. Parkin Associates.
And while other Canadian shopping centres had their receiving doors at the back, Yorkdale was constructed with a one-way, two-laned road for trucks running beneath the centre and leading directly to the retailers’ basement storage area.
The original mall, which took two years to build, opened under Trizec Corporation ownership.
Yorkdale shopping centre circa March 1964. (HAROLD WHYTE)
The design included a 60-foot (18-metre) tall atrium, 40-foot (12-metre) wide halls and 27-foot (8.2-metre) high ceilings. The corridors still retain this look and feel, although renovations in 2006 replaced the ceilings, windows and skylights.
The interior when built was airier and more spacious than malls at the time or since, with glass panels above the storefronts pulling in natural light. The ends of the mall and the elbow of the “L” shape were highlighted by wide courts with 12-metre ceilings. There were nine entrances to the stores from the outdoor parking lot, which was illuminated with 18-metre-high, chandelier-type lamp standards.
The mall has cycled through expansions and renovations over the years. Not much of the original mall is left today.
Yorkdale, now the fourth largest mall in the country, features more than 250 stores and has the reputation for attracting luxury retailers, with the most expensive rent per square foot (about $1,610) in Canada. Many international companies have opened their first retail locations in Canada at Yorkdale, including Apple, Microsoft and Tesla Motors. The mall is currently owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), through its subsidiary Oxford Properties Group and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation.
Nov. 16, 1970: New concepts in living call for new and better surroundings in which to live, and as the city expands, imagination and boldness must be encouraged to provide the better surroundings in which we will dwell, work, shop, play and relax. In some cases, achievements of modern architecture can create a Yorkdale plaza (above). In other areas, the need is for smaller, but inspired, solutions to problems. (MARIO GEO)
On Tuesday, Oct. 18, Yorkdale will pull back the curtain on another metamorphosis. Its 300,000-square-foot expansion is expected to cost $331 million. The newest wing will feature a 112,000-square-foot corridor with about 30 stores. There will be a five-floor underground parkade with more than 2,000-plus parking spots.
The 188,000-square-foot upscale Nordstrom store will open at Yorkdale the same week, on Friday, Oct. 21.
