The Eaton's Annex Fire

Our Eaton's and Simpsons page covers the department stores' business history. This is about one specific night: May 9, 1977, when fire tore through the T. Eaton Co.'s Annex building, just months after the first phase of the Eaton Centre had opened next door.

The Annex burns

The Eaton's Annex was a 10-storey retail-and-office building at Albert and James streets, opened in January 1913 as a discount-oriented offshoot of Eaton's main department store. On May 9, 1977, fire broke out and spread through the Annex and adjoining Eaton's warehouse buildings, sending a large smoke plume over downtown Toronto — contemporaneously described as the first fire of its kind downtown since the Great Fire of 1904.

A close call for the new mall

The fire seriously damaged the historic Church of the Holy Trinity, just north of the Eaton Centre site — the church lost its roof and roughly three-quarters of its south side, including three nave windows. Firefighters ultimately contained the blaze before it could spread to the brand-new, glass-vaulted Eaton Centre standing right beside the burning buildings, a close call for what was then Toronto's most significant new piece of downtown architecture. The Annex itself was a total loss and was later demolished as redevelopment of the Eaton's complex continued.

Sources

• BlogTO — That Time Toronto Demolished Everything Around Yonge and Queen
• City of Toronto Archives — Toronto History (Flickr Commons)