An ambitious plan for an iconic heritage site

“All night, till the rain came, little crowds of the curious stood about guarded entrances, glued eyes to curtain chinks, peered past mystery-shrouding screens,” wrote the unnamed writer in The Globe on Oct. 29, 1930. “Last night was moving night at Eaton’s – an end of old things and a beginning of new – for the big store and the big city it serves.”

The next day, when Timothy Eaton’s grandson, John David Eaton, pulled open the big bronze doors of Eaton’s College Street to allow his mother, Lady (Flora) Eaton, to walk in first on behalf of that big city, the pair would be followed by a “veritable stampede” of Torontonians – 10,000, in fact, would visit on that day to see what the hubbub was about.