#5 College Park Story - Sidebars that didn't make it into print

On Saturday November 8th, the Toronto Star ran a major feature I wrote about the downtown Toronto city block of College Park. The 3-page story appeared on the cover of the Condo section. The actual article appears above (scroll up)

Historian, author and broadcaster Mike Filey remembers the great Eaton College Park store

• It is part of the city’s history, it is part of our fabric
• My Dad worked there … in the men’s wear. That is where my mother met him
• Building showed the status of the Eaton firm, to be able to build that big during the Depression.
• “flagship of the Eaton Empire”, but soil conditions and the Depression caused the company to scale back the size of the building
• A Grey Coach bus would take shoppers from the Queen Street Eaton’s to College Park. They even had their own transit ticket.
• I used to get my car serviced at the BA Gas Station at Eaton College Park’s Automotive Centre off Hayter Street
• Building was designed by the same firm that designed Maple Leaf Gardens and the Royal York hotel
• Building was to showcase what was then the northern end of downtown Toronto. City core grew faster than Eaton anticipated and expansion leapfrogged over College Park to the Bloor and Yonge St intersection
• Carlton and College Streets originally did not meet head on. The city convinced Eaton to give up land so that one streetcar line could run from College to Carlton in front of the store.