Early plans and
Queen Streets at the various Eaton's buildings in 1920, demonstrating the extent of Eaton's landholdings on the current site of the Eaton Centre.
Timothy Eaton founded a dry goods store on Yonge Street in the 19th century that revolutionized retailing in Canada and became the largest
department store chain in the country. By the 20th century, the
Eaton's chain owned most of the land bounded by Yonge, Queen, Bay and Dundas streets, with the notable exceptions of
Old City Hall and the
Church of the Holy Trinity. The Eaton's land, once the site of Timothy Eaton's first store, was occupied by Eaton's large Main Store, the
Eaton's Annex and a number of related mail order and factory buildings. As the chain's warehouse and support operations were increasingly shifting to cheaper suburban locales in the 1960s, Eaton's wanted to make better use of its valuable downtown landholdings. In particular, the chain wanted to build a massive new flagship store to replace the aging Main Store at Yonge and Queen streets and the
Eaton's College Street store a few blocks to the north. In the mid-1960s, Eaton's announced plans for a massive office and shopping complex that would occupy several city blocks. Eaton's sought to demolish Toronto's Old City Hall (except for the clock tower and
cenotaph) and the Church of the Holy Trinity. The plan required the closing of a number of small city streets within the block: Albert Street, Louisa Street, Terauley Street (not to be confused with the stretch of Bay Street north of Queen Street, also formerly known as Terauley Street), James Street, Albert Lane, Downey's Lane and Trinity Square. At one point, even the Old City Hall clock tower was to be demolished. After a fierce local debate over the fate of the city hall and church buildings, Eaton's put its plans on hiatus in 1967. The Eaton Centre plans were resuscitated in 1971, although these plans allowed for the preservation of Old City Hall. Controversy erupted anew, however, as the congregation of the Church of the Holy Trinity exhibited an increased willingness to fight the demolition plans for its church. Eventually, the Eaton Centre plans were revised to save Old City Hall and the church and then revised further when Holy Trinity's parishioners successfully fought to ensure that the new complex would not block all sunlight to the church. These amendments to the plans resulted in three significant changes to the proposed centre from the 1960s concept. First, the new Eaton's store was shifted north to Dundas Street, as the new store would be too large to be accommodated in its existing location on Queen Street (opposite its rival
Simpson's, which is now the
Hudson's Bay store) as a result of the preservation of Old City Hall. This resulted in the mall being constructed with Eaton's and Simpson's acting as anchors at either end. The second significant change was the reduction in the size of the office component so that the Eaton Centre project no longer represented an attempt to extend the City's financial district north of Queen Street, as the
Eaton family had contemplated in the 1960s. Finally, the bulk of the centre was shifted east to the Yonge Street frontage, and the complex was designed so that it no longer had any frontage along Bay Street. Old City Hall and the church were thus saved, as was
the Salvation Army headquarters building by virtue of its location between the two other preserved buildings (although the Salvation Army building was demolished in the late 1990s to make way for an Eaton Centre expansion, the Salvation Army's Canadian head offices moved to
Leaside, and a
City of Toronto plaque was placed at the original site).
Name At the time of the centre's opening in 1977, the complex was marketed as "The Eaton Centre", before changing its name to "Toronto Eaton Centre" in the early 1990s to disambiguate from other
Eaton Centres across Canada. Despite the bankruptcy of the Eaton's department store chain in 1999 (and the closure of a short-lived Sears Canada-owned revival in 2002), the mall retained the Eaton Centre name, representing an ongoing tribute to Timothy Eaton and the small shop he once opened at this location. However, as Sears retained the Eaton's
trademarks and other
intellectual property (IP), the name was used under
licence until December 2016, when mall owner Cadillac Fairview acquired the Eaton's IP outright. In early 2014, mall management began an effort to enforce usage of the full "Toronto Eaton Centre" name. However, at that time, exterior signage was inconsistent as to the centre's name, with signs facing
Sankofa Square (formerly Yonge–Dundas Square) simply reading "Eaton Centre" while several others used the full name. The office component of the complex was constructed over the years, as follows: • "One Dundas West" (29 storeys) in 1977, designed by
B+H Architects and
Zeidler Partnership Architects; • "Cadillac Fairview Tower" (36 storeys) in 1982, designed by Bregman + Hamann Architects, and Zeidler Partnership Architects; • "250 Yonge Street" (formerly Eaton Tower) (35 storeys) in 1992, designed by Zeidler Partnership Architects, and Crang & Boake; and • "
Simpson Tower" (33 storeys) at 401 Bay Street, completed in 1969 and became part of the Toronto Eaton Centre upon Cadillac Fairview's acquisition of the Hudson's Bay block in 2014.
Early years Despite the controversy and criticisms, the centre was an immediate success, spawning
many different shopping centres across Canada bearing the same brand name of Eaton. The mall's profits were said to be so lucrative that it has often been credited with keeping the troubled Eaton's chain afloat for another two decades before it succumbed to bankruptcy in 1999. Today, the Eaton Centre is one of North America's top shopping destinations, and is Toronto's most popular tourist attraction. Shortly after Sears' acquisition of Eaton's, the
statue of Timothy Eaton was moved from the Dundas Street entrance to the
Royal Ontario Museum. In the early 2000s, owner Cadillac Fairview redesigned the mall's Yonge Street façade, bringing it closer to the street and making it more closely resemble an urban shopping district, with stores opening directly onto the street, and presenting a variety of façades to create the perception of an urban streetscape. Further redevelopments, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, added new retail space. The west side of the complex, opposite Albert Street, was expanded. The glass atrium in the northeast corner at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas streets was redesigned, with a number of former tenants—including a
Toronto Police Service office—relocated or evicted, to make way for
H&M's Canadian flagship store designed by Queen's Quay Architects International Inc. 's Faculty of Business as seen in 2009. Toronto Metropolitan University was known as Ryerson University at the time. One of the mall's two parking garages, the nine-storey Dundas Parkade on Dundas Street with its two spiral stack ramps and the multiplex cinema below it, was demolished in 2003. In the place of the garage and of a vacant development site on the southeast corner of Dundas and Bay streets, a new wing of the Toronto Eaton Centre was opened in 2006, containing
Canadian Tire and
Best Buy, with
Toronto Metropolitan University's Faculty of Business and a new parking garage with 574 spaces on the upper levels. This work was done by Queen's Quay Architects International Inc. with Zeidler Partnership Architects. In 2014, the retail complex occupies about , making it the second-largest mall in Ontario (after
Square One Shopping Centre in
Mississauga but ahead of
Yorkdale Shopping Centre in
Toronto's north end).
2010 revitalization project On June 18, 2010, Cadillac Fairview announced a two-year, renovation and revitalization plan for the mall. Upgrades include new flooring throughout, the redevelopment of the centre's two existing food courts, upgrades and expansions to washroom facilities, lighting improvements, new railings, new entry doors, and green initiatives. In June 2010, a would-be shopper was filmed shouting at the locked doors of an entrance to the Eaton Centre, which was in the process of entering lockdown as the
G20 Summit street protests loomed nearby and was later uploaded to
YouTube. The video quickly became an
Internet meme, but was removed by the original poster shortly thereafter. However,
the video has been re-uploaded hundreds of times by other users. The man's name was Lee Zaslofsky, a Canadian anti-war activist who protested the Western occupation of
Iraq. Zaslofsky died on August 24, 2024.
Since 2010 2012 shooting On June 2, 2012, a shooting took place in the Urban Eatery food court while the mall was heavily crowded with shoppers. Seven people were shot: one of them, 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan, died at the scene while another, 22-year-old Nixon Nirmalendran, died at a hospital on June 11, 2012. According to Toronto Police Chief
Bill Blair, Hassan and Nirmalendran may have had gang affiliations although Nirmalendran's lawyer denied this. Others were injured in the panic as people fled the area, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman who began undergoing
labour but did not give birth. Jessica Ghawi, an American tourist who had left the food court minutes prior to the shooting, was killed seven weeks later in
a mass shooting at a movie theatre in
Aurora, Colorado. sectioning off the entrance to the Eaton Centre following a shooting incident in 2012. Two days after the shooting, 23-year-old Christopher Husbands turned himself in to authorities and was charged with first-degree murder. At the time of the shooting, he was under
house arrest for unrelated charges. He was found guilty of second-degree murder and guilty of five counts of aggravated assault, one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and one count of reckless discharge of a firearm. In April 2015, Husbands was sentenced to 30 years-to-life imprisonment. Husbands had grown up with Nirmalendran and his brothers, and was close friends with them. Four months prior to the shooting, he had survived an attack in which he was beaten and stabbed more than twenty-five times by six associates, allegedly including Nirmalendran and one of this brothers. Husbands was granted a new trial in July 2017 as the Ontario Court of Appeal stated the judge had made a mistake in their decision to deny "rotating triers" in selecting the jury. Husbands's lawyer stated, "He experienced auditory and visual hallucinations. He has no memory of the events that followed inside the food court," arguing that his actions were a result of
dissociation, a symptom of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that stemmed from the stabbing attack prior to the shooting. It was the same defence used during his first trial. In late November 2019, Husbands was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter, five counts of aggravated assault and one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and reckless discharge of a firearm. On the manslaughter convictions, Husbands was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility of parole by 2021.
Sears closure to present and former
Samsung Experience Store from inside the mall in 2022. The right one was one of several that moved into the space vacated by
Sears Canada in 2013. It was announced on October 29, 2013, that Sears Canada would close its flagship location at the mall. On January 15, 2014,
Nordstrom announced that it would be taking over some of the space vacated by Sears. The former lower level of Sears (part of Level 1 and part of Level 2 of the mall) was replaced with various retailers, which opened in fall 2015. Examples of these retailers included
Lush and
Showcase. Afterwards, a three-floor Nordstrom opened in fall 2016 alongside
Uniqlo, an expanded
H&M and a
Samsung Store. The Samsung Store was closed in fall 2023 and was replaced with a
BMO that opened in late 2024. In January 2014,
Hudson's Bay Company announced it would sell the
Hudson's Bay flagship store complex on Queen Street, including the
Simpson Tower offices and Queen Street West location of its namesake
department store, to
Cadillac Fairview and lease the site for 25 years. Prior to this transaction, the Hudson's Bay Queen Street complex had separate management/ownership and was not considered part of the Eaton Centre, nonetheless, it was connected to the Eaton Centre via a pedestrian bridge and
underground Path. On March 2, 2023, Nordstrom announced that it would be closing all Canadian stores, including its Eaton Centre location. The store closed on June 13, 2023. From late 2023 to early 2024, the first floor of the former Nordstrom was used as a temporary exhibit themed to the
aurora borealis called Canadian Chroma. In June 2024,
La Maison Simons,
Eataly and Nike announced that they would open in the former Nordstrom area in late 2025. in former
Nordstrom space In March 2025, Hudson's Bay filed for bankruptcy with all but six stores closing permanently at first. Hudson's Bay Queen Street was among the six remaining open, though all of the six remaining stores would close as well by June 1, 2025. On September 18, 2025, La Maison Simons opened a 112,000-square-foot, three-storey store in part of the former Nordstrom space. The store is accessible to the Eaton Centre via a new pedestrian walkway from the third floor of the north end of the main part of the mall, and the other walkway at the north end of the mall near the
Uniqlo store. ==Food courts==