[URBAN NOTE] "Yorkdale Mall brought shopping into the 20th century"

[rfmcdonald]

Janice Bradbeer's long-form article at the Toronto Star explains the sheer novelty, and innovation, of Toronto's Yorkdale Mall. It really is a lovely complex.

The crowded corridors were “like the Friday before Christmas,” when the new Yorkdale Shopping Centre first opened its doors on a cold and cloudy Feb. 26, 1964.

The crush of visitors that Wednesday was so bad, the Toronto Daily Star reported, that a 60-year-old man stepped into a six-foot square plate glass window after mistaking it for a door. The glass shattered and he disappeared into the crowd, rubbing only his nose.

What compelled shoppers to leave their warm homes, hop into their Ramblers, and drive to the rural outskirts at Dufferin St. south of Highway 401 in -9C degree weather?

“The first impression you get is this is shopping in the 20th century,” the Star said about Yorkdale — possibly one explanation for the mall’s popularity, which billed itself as “The new uptown of Toronto.”

Yorkdale Shopping Centre debuted as the largest enclosed mall in Canada and bigger than the original size of any mall in the world. It offered one-third of a mile of shops and services (1.2 million square feet), free outdoor parking and was open from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily and Saturdays until 6 p.m.

Toronto had neighbourhood strip malls but nothing like this. Yorkdale was the first Canadian mall to feature two major retailers — Eaton’s and Simpson’s — under one roof, thus dispensing with the parking headaches and congestion of downtown shopping.