Category: Stores (Page 1 of 2)

Mall, Deserted

March 13, 2025 / Marvin Job / 1 Comment

TO Cityscapes has returned from hiatus!

Last weekend, while in the Bay-Bloor area, I suddenly had an idea to check on the state of the Cumberland Terrace mall. I knew it had fallen from grace lately, but I just wanted to see how far down it had gone – way down, as I found out.

For those not familiar, Cumberland Terrance is a two-story mall running from Bay Street to Yonge Street – a considerable distance. The lower level host(ed) a huge food court, and the street level contains shops and services (or what’s left of them…).

It was mid-day Saturday – peak time for people to be out and about, I should think. As I walked through the lower level food court area, it gave off a creepy vibe: there was no one around, other than a homeless person or two, and everything was shuttered. What little sound there was bounced off the barren walls and floors. I went up to the street level portion of the mall to see if it was in a similar state; it had fared a little better as it didn’t look quite as deserted as the lower level.

The Nicest Way From Yonge to Bay...

“The nicest way from Yonge to Bay” was Cumberland Terrace’s slogan when it opened on October 14, 1974:

Described in an ad as “three glass-enclosed levels of intriguing shops and restaurants,” it utilized fashionable hues of red and orange brick and flooring to enhance its landscaped interior. Initial tenants included a mix of chains (Black’s, Classic Book Shops, Dack’s Shoes, LCBO), and independent retailers with odd names like “Mr. Eat ’Em”.

Highlights of the opening on day one included a steam calliope playing at the northwest corner of Yonge and Bloor, and a display of classic cars sponsored by a cigarette maker. Within a month, DeBoer’s opened a two-floor furniture store. The mall’s location above a busy subway junction and across the street from a new parking lot seemed to bode well for its future.

Decline

The mall slowly decayed over the following decades, as its higher-end retailers moved elsewhere and its upper levels emptied. As the owners failed to upgrade the premises, Cumberland Terrace became an unofficial monument to 1970s shopping design. Despite providing a home for independent businesses, it was increasingly viewed as a blight on the increasingly aspirational neighbourhood streetscape. **

In Toronto, Cumberland Terrance is one of the last barely-altered examples of 1970s retail architecture. It never did bounce back after COVID wrecked havoc on the world; it’s a pity the mall has come to such a sad state.

Currently…

Like many, I remember how this mall was the place to shop and eat back in the day. Fast forwarding to today, here’s how the lower level looks:

The Future of Cumberland Terrace?

Apparently there have been many different development proposals over the years. The latest one can be found here.

Development proposal by KingSett Capital

We will just have to wait and see what becomes of the space.

** Source: JB’s Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Stackt Market

March 24, 2024 / Marvin Job / 1 Comment

Stackt Market is a truly unique concept. Located at 28 Bathurst Street at Front Street West, Stackt Market has been awarded “Public Space of the Year” by Designlines Magazine, and is also the winner of “Retail Innovation for Fast Company’s Innovation by Design”.

Opened in the summer of 2019, Stackt Market is built entirely from 120 reclaimed shipping containers which create 100,000 square feet of art, retail, events and public space. The containers are – wait for it – stacked, with those on the bottom retrofitted and occupied by pop-ups, creative incubators, 30+ retailers and food/beverage vendors. The shipping containers up top act as large canvasses for local and international artists, drawing attention to the site from the many surrounding condo developments and office towers. Stackt Market is also home to 300+ annual events and 7 annual festivals which put community at the forefront.

Designed by LGA Architectural Partners’ Janna Levitt and Danny Bartman with Stackt Market founder Matt Rubinoff, Stackt Market inhabits the site of a former smelting plant. The 2.4-acre-lot is roughly the size of two city blocks.

Onsite Art Gallery

Stackt Market is strong on community and art. According to their website:

STACKT is on a mission to innovate a new experience where customers, businesses, art and hospitality thrive as one. STACKT is built on the idea that commerce is culture, and culture is community made. The community is made up of innovators, creators, collaborators, and consumers alike.

Come check it out!

Click here to browse all the shots of this TO Cityscape

A Walk Down Roncesvalles Avenue

March 15, 2024 / Marvin Job / 2 Comments

I love Roncesvalles (aka Little Poland) – it has such a welcoming village-feel to it and exudes a laid-back yet slightly hip vibe. Roncesvalles Avenue itself stretches for 1.8 km, and is filled with gardens and charming, independent shops along the way. About 15,000 people live in Roncesvalles Village’s vintage buildings.

Known as “Roncy” to the locals, Roncesvalles consists of the stretch of Roncesvalles Avenue from Bloor Street south to Queen Street West.

**“They Came From Roncesvalles”**
The mural wall which greets visitors. The artists who painted this mural are Spud1, Wales, Random & Cruz.

**More of the Mural**
Artists: Spud1, Wales, Random & Cruz

A Very Brief History of Roncesvalles

Roncesvalles Avenue was originally owned by Colonel Walter O’Hara who named the street after the Roncesvalles gorge in Spain, where he had won a battle against Napolean’s army circa 1813. British settlers began to arrive in the early 1900’s as residential homes appeared. After WWII large numbers of Polish immigrants arrived and set up all sorts of businesses; that is why this neighbourhood celebrates the Roncesvalles Village Polish Festival every year.

Little Poland

Culturally, the area is known as the centre of the Polish community in Toronto with prominent Polish institutions, businesses and St. Casimir’s Catholic Church located on Roncesvalles Avenue. The businesses along Roncesvalles have formed the Roncesvalles Village Business Improvement Area and hold the largest Polish Festival in North America, which takes place every September.

**Mural Outside “Jimmy’s Coffee”**
2210 Dundas Street West. You know the area is urban-hip when there’s a Jimmy’s Coffee in the ‘hood.

**The Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Avenue**
Built between late-1911 and early-1912, the theatre is a designated heritage site and is Toronto’s oldest standing movie theatre in use for showing movies. When news of its closure became public, a grass-roots community movement sprang up in order to save the cinema. After a great deal of effort, the movement was ultimately successful and the Revue reopened in October 2007. It is now operated by the not-for-profit “Revue Film Society”.

Roncesvalles is very well known for the large number of small restaurants, cafés and specialty food shops of various cuisines. There are several bakeries and delicatessens found along the full length of Roncesvalles.

One of the many fruit and veg shops along Roncesvalles Avenue

**Sweetpea’s Floral & Gift Boutique**
This is a floral studio located at 294 Roncesvalles Avenue. It’s widely recognized as Toronto’s Best Florist (Toronto Life, BlogTO).

Sweetpea’s was just so colourful and inspiring I had to take yet another shot…

Neighbourhood garage doors, Roncesvalles Avenue

**St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church**
263 Roncesvalles Avenue

**Pope John Paul II Monument**
The piece was created in 1984 by Alexander von Svoboda. The bronze statue sits outside St. Casimir’s Polish Parishes Credit Union Limited at 220 Roncesvalles Avenue.

**The Chopin Restaurant**
Polish cuisine, 165 Roncesvalles Avenue

In window of Roncesvalles restaurant. Plenty of restaurants in Roncesvalles.

**Grafton Community Garden**
In Grafton Avenue Park, 23 Roncesvalles Avenue. Resident Walter Ruston painted the mural (on wall behind the garden) of the Sunnyside Amusement Park. This area used to be a neglected scrap of land but was turned into a thing of beauty by local gardening committees.

I’ll leave you with a couple of sites to explore it you’d like to learn more about Roncesvalles:

From Destination Toronto:
An excellent post on their website

Roncesvalles BIA:
Local info found here

City Walk on a Foggy Day

February 7, 2024 / Marvin Job / 1 Comment

This post was originally from a couple of weekends ago when the weather was not cooperating. I am reposting this one as I don’t believe it was published recently given all my trouble with my automated sender.

This post is one-part city walk mixed with two-parts photography experiment.

Does anyone remember what sunshine looks like?

It’s a distant foggy memory, much like the weather we’ve had recently. Given that, I thought it would be interesting to take a walk in the fog/darkness and shoot in black and white to emphasize the moodiness.

I love shooting in black and white; it makes everything look so different and dramatic – details stand out, creating emotions. In addition to shooting in soft black and white I used a diffusion filter which removed much of the “digital edge” from modern digital cameras, leaving a soft B&W treatment looking like it was shot on film. The shots are intentionally dark and muted, and the fog enhanced the effect.

Condo on Jarvis Street, below Gerrard Street East. Taken from Mutual St.

Condos at Jarvis Street & Dundas Street East. Shot from Mutual Street

Inside OctoZone

Located at 247 Yonge Street, across from the Eaton Centre, is OctoZone. OctoZone is a huge claw machine-themed gift shop. The interior is very Asian-styled, infused with copious amounts of bright turquoise and hot pink neon (the effect lost, of course, in my black and white shots). I’ve passed this place several times and have always wondered what it is; this time I decided to take temporary refuge from the fog and drizzle, go in and check it out. It’s quite an interesting place: click here if you’d like to watch a short YouTube video about OctoZone.

Later, Back On Yonge Street…

Looking north on Yonge Street. Shot from Yonge-Dundas Square.

The electronic billboards of Yonge-Dundas Square in the fog

The Aura condo in the fog. Shot from Yonge-Dundas Square.

The World Food Market at 335 Yonge Street, below Gould Street

The corner of Church Street & Carlton Street

Next stop: home, where it’s warm and dry! 🙂

RC Coffee

July 21, 2023 / Marvin Job / 1 Comment

RC Coffee (short for Robo Café) kiosks are popping up around Toronto.

So far in my travels I’ve come across two locations – one near the St. Lawrence Market area, and the other at 475 Yonge Street, above College Street.

Automated coffee cafe at 36 Church Street, north of Front Street East

RC Coffee automated café at 475 Yonge Street, just above College Street

So what are they, exactly? RC Coffee’s website proclaims themselves Canada’s First Robotic Café – Fully Automated Coffee Kiosk, Open 24/7. Serving coffee without a live person present is the name of the game here. From their website:

RC Coffee is filling a void in the market for high-quality unattended coffee kiosks. We’re looking to change the perception of self-serve with sophisticated technology that brews coffee up to the standards of seasoned coffee connoisseurs. No more drip, no more pods. RC Coffee taps into the potential of the latest Eversys Cameo espresso machine technology to rival the coffee from any café.

Here at RC Coffee, we understand that it’s more than just great coffee that keeps people coming back. Our robots delight users with their speed of service and accuracy. Our simple mobile app makes it easy to find the closest Robo Café, remotely view the menu, and load an account via credit card. Next time, you can load your previous order or select from saved favourites, selecting personalized blends at the touch of a button.

So much for the personal touch. Oh well, automation marches on, I guess.

Other RC Coffee locations in Toronto are at:

Toronto General Hospital, 200 Elizabeth Street
Kensington Market, 160 Baldwin Street
Little Italy, 550 College Street
Lyndhurst Centre, 520 Sutherland Drive
Dundas Station, 1 Dundas Street West
St. Joseph’s Hospital, 30 The Queensway
Bickle Centre, 130 Dunn Avenue

You can learn more about Robo Café here on their website.

Honest Eds

July 17, 2023 / Marvin Job / 0 Comments

This will bring back memories for a lot of people. These shots are from February 2017, so they’re too new to fall into my From the Vaults category, but too old to be considered new cityscapes (if that makes any sense).

Ah yes, Honest Ed Mirvish’s little empire of kitsch at 581 Bloor Street West. This photoset was taken on the last weekend that Honest Eds was open to the public. The store had been emptied and closed prior to this date, but reopened on this particular weekend only for a couple of farewell parties and a massive art installation which took up the entire store. After that weekend the store closed permanently and the demolition began. A new condo building now sits on that famous corner of Bloor and Bathurst, and yet another piece of Toronto history has sadly died.

Eaton Centre & The Bay, 2014

March 16, 2023 / Marvin Job / 1 Comment

So, I don’t know if shots from 2014 qualify for inclusion in my so-called series From The Vaults (i.e. old shots of Toronto). I found these the other day while browsing and thought I’d post them as they are a bit of a blast from the past, so to speak.

Some of the shots are slightly “arty”; I was experimenting at the time with capturing urban life using a slow shutter speed, hence the intentional motion blur.

The Bay at Queen and Yonge

The original Bay store at Yonge and Queen Streets only partially exists since Saks Fifth Avenue took over the entire east half of the building in 2016. These shots are prior to the merge and remodel of the building.

The Bay’s southeast entrance on to Yonge Street. This entrance is long gone; in its place is a trendoid coffee bar/resto, which is part of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Pay phones!!?? Remember those? In the lobby of The Bay’s southeast entrance.

Ground level sales floor, Women’s jewellery (note Ivanka Trump’s jewellery line, far right – that dates it!)

In The Old Queen Street Bridge

I shot these while crossing over from The Bay to the Eaton Centre in the old pedestrian bridge spanning Queen Street West. This bridge has long disappeared and been replaced with a new one (check out my Eaton Centre bridge post here).

Inside the Eaton Centre

Another busy Saturday afternoon in the Eaton Centre

Speeding through Yonge and Richmond Streets

CLICK HERE TO BROWSE ALL THE SHOTS FROM THIS CITYSCAPE

10 Scrivener Square

February 7, 2023 / Marvin Job / 2 Comments

What do you do with an abandoned old train station? Why, turn it into a high-end LCBO of course!

Located just off Yonge Street near Summerhill Avenue, this structure used to be the North Toronto Railway Station. It was in service from 1916 to 1930, and closed in 1931 after Union Station opened downtown.

In 1916, architects Frank Darling and John Pearson were assigned the task of creating a new North Toronto rail station. The centrepiece of their plan was a 140-foot clock tower inspired by the Campanile in St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Built by the P. Lyall & Sons Construction Company, the station went on to service the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) line running across Toronto.

This station was the first building in the city to be constructed of Tyndall limestone from Manitoba, supplied by The Wallace Sandstone Quarries.

When then-Mayor Tommy Church laid the cornerstone on September 9, 1915, he praised the CPR for being the first railway company to give Toronto proper recognition. He hoped the station would be the first of a series of railway gateways to the city, improving inter-city commuting. When passenger service began on June 4, 1916, destinations included Lindsay, Owen Sound, and Ottawa. The most popular route was Montreal, which attracted wealthy businessmen who lived nearby.

When Union Station opened in 1927 and the Great Depression followed shortly thereafter, the North Toronto Railway Station, which served smaller towns in Ontario and was originally meant to augment the bigger station, began to suffer. The last paying passengers filed through the station on September 27, 1930. Brewers’ Retail moved into the northern portion of the terminal building in 1931.

Ticket area, circa 1916
City of Toronto Archives

The station was re-opened, briefly, at 10:30AM on May 22, 1939, when King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth (mother of Queen Elizabeth II), arrived for their first visit to Toronto. This was the first visit to Canada by a reigning British monarch. The King was also officially the Canadian monarch, marking the first visit by one to the city. The royal couple departed Toronto through Union Station. Shortly after World War II, returning soldiers passed through the North Toronto station; they were its last rail passengers.

The building has been protected under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act since October 13, 1976.

Inside The Building…

You want booze? There’s nothing you can’t find here – champagne, wine, beer, vodka, gin, whisky, scotch, tequila – you name it, they have that and a lot more. They also carry extensive vintage and imported liquor.

Staying true to the building’s roots, aisles and signs echo its past life

The station has a much, much longer history than I’ve noted, so if you’re interested in reading a more in-depth article, click here for the wiki.

CLICK HERE TO BROWSE ALL THE SHOTS FROM THIS CITYSCAPE

Windows at Saks Fifth Avenue

December 20, 2022 / Marvin Job / 0 Comments

Continuing on the store window theme, here’s what Saks Fifth Avenue, along Queen Street West, had to offer:

The resemblance to Cousin Itt has been noted…

Christmas Windows at The Bay

December 19, 2022 / Marvin Job / 2 Comments

The Hudson’s Bay flagship store at Queen and Yonge Streets traditionally have superb Christmas windows, filled with a lot of intricate detail. I ventured down to the store last night with camera in hand and great expectations of a warm and fuzzy experience. As a Christmas traditionalist, though, I was incredibly disappointed: instead of the traditional cheerful Christmas vignettes, the window displays this year are all about the commercialism and automation of Christmas gift giving. The emphasis this year is on providing an interactive “virtual experience” which involves the spectator via their phone.

Since Saks Fifth Avenue moved into the eastern side of the building a few years ago, The Bay Christmas windows have never been the same. Anyone who’s lived in the city for a while and gone down to The Bay to check these out will see that now there are only five Bay windows remaining on the Queen Street side, near the west end. I remember when those fantastically-dressed windows stretched all the way across Queen Street and down Yonge to Richmond Street, utilizing all the Bay windows. At one time, The Bay’s Christmas windows were easily on par with Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s in New York; it was an awesome site, but is no more.

The Windows Theme This Year

For the first time ever, the digital extension will now transport Canadians inside the windows from anywhere across the country. To immerse themselves in the whimsy and wonder of the windows, customers just scan the QR code, point the camera at a surface and click to be transported into the augmented reality. Once ‘inside,’ device motion and screen interactions let people explore elements from all five of the holiday windows using both the front and rear cameras on their smartphones. An added bonus: Holiday enthusiasts can share a photo or video using the AR experience on Instagram or Facebook Story, tagging @hudsonsbay and using the hashtag #MyBayHolidayWindow for a chance to win one of five $1,000 gift cards to shop in-store and on TheBay.com*.

The unique QR code can be found at select Hudson’s Bay stores, on The Bay’s social media channels, on The Bay gift cards, and on packages ordered on TheBay.com throughout the holiday season.

“For more than 100 years, these holiday windows have been quintessential to the Toronto experience,” says Alexander Meyer, Chief Customer Officer at The Bay. “With the digital transcendence of this year’s windows, we are creating a whole new level of connectivity for our customers, not only in Toronto but throughout Canada.”¹

The Bay’s Christmas Windows: 2022

The windows this year did not really lend themselves to still images as all the objects were in motion; instead I’ve captured a little video of each of the five window vignettes:

Mail-Room Department
The inner workings of the technology used to scan, sort and process all of Santa’s letters. A giant computer spits out a list of names while a map of the globe gives Santa directions to find all the boys and girls around the world.

Ornament-Making Department
A snapshot of how some signature ornaments are painted and detailed with precision and care. A giant mechanical hand carefully selects each colour to be applied before the finished crafts are sent out for people to decorate their homes.

Gifting Department
A glimpse into all of the parcels being wrapped, sorted and packed by robots working in sync to keep up with the flow of presents coming down the conveyor belt. Plus, new technology allows onlookers to press a button on the glass and one very friendly robot will want to give you a high-five and take a selfie.

Candy Cane Department
A look at how the magical treats are made and gently packaged with a robotic arm before being dropped into queue to be sent in Santa’s sleigh and delivered to the children of the globe.

Snow-Making Department
Ever wonder how snow is actually made? A bounty of magical frozen flakes come to life in this winter wonderland. Passersby can snap photos in adult and kid-sized cutouts on the exterior of the windows and join in with the snow angels.