How old is yorkdale mall

The Encore Noshery was reputed to be the largest restaurant in Canada in a shopping centre. The beauty parlour, "Ponytails," which catered to the needs of small children, had hobbyhorses instead of regular chairs. Yorkdale had a cinema with two auditoriums, with combined seating for patrons. It was an afternoon matinee, attended mostly by seniors. I was one of the few persons in the audience that did not have purple-tinted hair.

As a matter of fact, even then, I did not have much hair at all. As the screening progressed, I discovered that I was also one of the few that was laughing.

I admit that the humour was a little off-colour— typically Mel Brooks. Eaton's and Simpsons both had restaurants. The Simpson's Court restaurant overlooked the cathedral-like interior courtyard with its three-storey ceiling.

I remember visiting it numerous times for lunch, usually ordering the daily special of soup, chicken-pot pie, and a salad. Eaton's Vista restaurant was on the second floor, at the northwest corner of the store, overlooking the mall where there was a fountain.

In the evenings, the Vista featured all-you-can-eat buffet, which included roast beef. I sometimes visited it on a Friday for dinner. I seem to remember that Eaton's restaurant was later renamed "The Loft," but I cannot find any proof of this.

Memory sometimes plays strange tricks. Though Yorkdale was located quite a distance north of the downtown, it was connected by several arterial roadways—Highway , Wilson Avenue, and Dufferin Street. Market research conducted by Eaton's had shown that the mall was likely to attract shoppers from within a minute drive. This meant that people as far away as Brampton and Whitby could easily drive to Yorkdale, as well as those living north of Bloor Street.

This was a potential market of almost a million shoppers. The store Graham created for Eaton's had a striking exterior, with off-white bricks containing three-dimensional patterns that accented the vertical elements of the design. Another added feature of the plaza was the underground truck tunnel that delivered goods to the retail outlets.

The gigantic Dominion Store featured an underground conveyor belt that delivered customers' purchases to a station in the south-west parking lot, where they could pick up their groceries. Aerial view of Yorkdale in , looking toward the the northwest. Toronto Public Library, tspa John B. Parkin Associates were hired to design the Simpsons store, the architect within the firm who was assigned the work being John Andrews, a Harvard-educated Australian. I recall attending Boxing Day sales at Yorkdale during the s; I visited early in the morning to avoid the enormous crowds, even though compared to today, they were considerably smaller.

Yorkdale was where I first experienced the frustration of losing my automobile in a parking lot. I soon learned to memorize the row or section number where it was located.

During the s, I visited the mall to attend the Yorkdale Antique Market. 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.

A bakery, open kitchen with take-home food and a restaurant were also on the premises. 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. Crowds lined up at the doors prior to the a. By mid-morning, the four parking lots with 6, free spaces were filled. At p. Then invited VIPS sat down to a lobster and cocktails lunch. There was even a dual auditorium-theatre showing different movies, a first for Toronto, with seating for more than 1, patrons.

Retailers advertised specials in the Toronto Daily Star surrounding the opening. It was the T. By , Metro had sprawled to cover three-quarters of that terrain, giving rise to an increased emphasis on automobile travel in urban planning. Clair Avenue to the north side of the In the mids, the T. Eaton Company bought a 40 hectare grassy meadow on the southwest side of the Dufferin Street interchange as the site for a massive suburban department store.

With an apparently ideal crossroads location, the plan was for no mere small-scale shopping plaza. In , Simpsons, the rival Yonge Street department store, was invited to join the project. Catering to the suburban, car-oriented community for whom a shopping trip downtown—with the difficulties of congestion and parking—was impractical, malls quickly became a feature of the postwar city. Initially built as outdoor plazas and then as enclosed buildings with a single anchor, the number of shopping centres in Metro Toronto increased rapidly: from 5 in to in , according to Lemon.

At first, malls catered to the immediate neighbourhood, like the strip mall at Eglinton and Bayview—the first in Toronto—or were purpose-built to be regional centres at the heart of a new residential community, like Don Mills. But Yorkdale represented something new in Toronto: a regional centre, isolated but connected by roadways, and meant to supplant the downtown.

Market research indicated that, with the and secondary highways, the venture would attract shoppers from within a minute drive—as far away as Brampton and Whitby—in addition to Torontonians north of Bloor Street. It was a potential market of , shoppers. And, as was common for the time, the developers were able to negotiate ad hoc zoning modifications and approvals from municipal authorities eager for new assessment revenues.

Eaton's at Yorkdale Shopping Centre , ca. Rendering of the Vista Restaurant at Eaton's. Photo via Chuckman's Nostalgia. Some colour views of the Vista Restaurant and area surrounding Eaton's thanks to an early postcard. How cool do those leaf-like outcrops from Vista Restaurant look? Holt Renfrew had humble roots in the mall.

Back when Fairweather was a big deal. The original layout of the mall. It's undergone numerous additions since then. Join the conversation Load comments. Ikea won't be selling Christmas trees in Toronto this year due to shortage.

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