The Montreal Eaton Centre (), colloquially known as the Eaton Centre, is a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

and office complex in

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. It is named after the now-defunct

Eaton's The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's g ...

department store, and with the

Toronto Eaton Centre CF Toronto Eaton Centre, commonly referred to simply as the Eaton Centre, is a shopping mall and office complex in the Downtown Toronto, downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is owned and managed by Cadillac Fairview (CF). It was named ...

, is one of two remaining Eaton Centres in the country. The Montreal Eaton Centre opened on November 14, 1990. In 2018, it absorbed its adjacent sister mall Complexe Les Ailes and the two shopping centres were combined into a single property which retained the Montreal Eaton Centre name. As such, the property consists of two separate buildings at 677 Saint Catherine Street West (the former

flagship store which had become the Complexe Les Ailes mall in 2002) and 705 Saint Catherine Street West (the former Les Terrasses mall, which became the original Montreal Eaton Centre). It is accessible through the

Underground City An underground city is a series of linked subterranea (geography), subterranean spaces that may provide a defensive refuge; a place for living, working or shopping; a transit system; mausoleum, mausolea; wine or storage cellars; cisterns or dra ...

, which is connected to the Montreal Metro's McGill station. The Montreal Eaton Centre shopping mall has a of

gross leasable area In architecture, construction, and real estate, floor area, floor space, or floorspace is the area (measured in square metres or square feet) taken up by a building or part of it. The ways of defining "floor area" depend on what factors of the bui ...

. The building features an additional of office space on the upper levels, branded as "1500 University." A bronze statue of hockey player

Ken Dryden Kenneth Wayne Dryden (born August 8, 1947) is a Canadians, Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender, politician, lawyer, businessman, and author. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was ...

and a three-storeys-tall tableau made by fine arts enamel painter Bernard Séguin Poirier are located in the mall.

History

Les Terrasses

The site at 705 Saint Catherine Street West originally featured a shopping mall name "Les Terrasses" from 1976 to 1987. It was built atop the now-defunct Victoria Street; the road and its buildings were expropriated for construction of the mall. The mall layout was a triangular spiral, with gradually-rising interconnected floors, approximately high in total. Though it had three escalators, one at each point of the triangle, patrons could gradually walk to the top of the mall. Floors were colour-coded and the mall was adorned with trees, plants and ivy. It housed 140 stores, each facing towards the centre of the triangle. Les Terrasses was demolished after only one decade of use and, following extensive construction, reopened as the Montreal Eaton Centre in 1990. Like Les Terrasses, the new Montreal Eaton Centre was connected to the Montreal Metro, the Underground City, and the Eaton's department store. Eaton's department store, for which it was named, closed in 1999. The property was managed by Rouses Quebec Corporation Development and York Hannover Development from 1978 to 1993. In September 1997,

Cadillac Fairview The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited, branded as Cadillac Fairview, is a Canadian company that invests in, owns, and manages commercial real estate, mainly in Canada and the United States. As of March 2017, the company had 73 properties, enco ...

bought the shopping centre for 113 million$ from a consortium of lenders that had taken over the Montreal Eaton Centre from its previous owner in 1996. In July 2000, Ivanhoé Cambridge (then known as

Ivanhoe ''Ivanhoe: A Romance'' ( ) by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in December 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. It marked a shift away from Scott's prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more ...

) acquired the mall through an exchange of assets. Cadillac Fairview ceded the Montreal Eaton Centre in exchange for Ivanhoe's stakes in Carrefour Laval and Promenades Saint-Bruno.

Goodwin's / Eaton's

The building at 677 Saint Catherine Street West was originally three storeys tall, and was built for the Goodwin's

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...

in the early 1900s. The building was sold to

in 1925, at which time it was referred to as the Eaton's building. Through the Ross and Macdonald architecture firm, the first three-floor expansion was completed in 1927, and the second three-floor expansion was completed between 1930 and 1931. Complexe les Ailes - 01

The top floor included Eaton's Ninth Floor Restaurant, which features an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

design that was inspired by the dining room of the SS ''Île-de-France'' and was created following Jacques Carlu's plans. The building was expanded toward de Maisonneuve Boulevard between 1958 and 1959, and access to the

Montreal Metro The Montreal Metro (, ) is a rubber-tired underground rapid transit system serving Greater Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The metro, operated by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), was inaugurated on October 14, 1966, during the tenure ...

via McGill station in 1967. The Eaton's building was home to Montreal's largest department store for decades. In 1999, following the closure of the Eaton's chain, Ivanhoé Cambridge acquired the property. After considerable redevelopment work between 2000 and 2002, involving the total gutting and complete redesign/rebuilding of the interior (preserving only the exterior facade and parts of the 9th floor), the former flagship of the Montreal retail scene was transformed into the building known as ''Complexe Les Ailes'' and ''1500 University''. At this time, Place Montreal Trust, the Montreal Eaton Centre and Complexe Les Ailes constituted Ivanhoé Cambridge's self-branded ''Sh3pping'' trio of shopping malls. For over a decade, the new mall was named after the

Les Ailes de la Mode Les Ailes de la Mode Inc. was a Quebec department store chain. Its flagship store was in downtown Montreal and was the anchor tenant of the Montreal Eaton Centre. Les Ailes de la Mode also subleased a section of their department stores to Bowrin ...

department store which occupied a third of its total area and was its main retailer. When the store closed in 2016, and the company permanently ceased operation, the mall's name would be changed. In 2019, Les Ailes' former store space was taken over by

Decathlon The decathlon is a combined event in athletics consisting of 10 track and field events. The word "decathlon" was formed, in analogy to the word "pentathlon", from Greek δέκα (''déka'', meaning "ten") and ἄθλος (''áthlos'', or ἄ ...

, which today is one of the largest tenants of the now merged Montreal Eaton Centre.

Mall expansion

In March 2014, Ivanhoé Cambridge had announced it would add Complexe Les Ailes with the Montreal Eaton Centre, and the newly merged complex would be renamed, dropping the Eaton Centre branding in the process. However, it was later decided that Complexe Les Ailes would just be used to expand the Montreal Eaton Centre, and preserve the latter's name. The two malls were renovated to have the same "look and feel". and in coming full circle, brought the Eaton's name back to the building that once housed Montreal's flagship Eaton's department store.

List of anchor stores

References

External links

* {{Authority control Art Deco architecture in Canada Buildings and structures completed in 1927 Downtown Montreal Eaton's Landmarks in Montreal Ross and Macdonald buildings Shopping malls established in 1990 Shopping malls in Montreal Department store buildings in Canada Ivanhoé Cambridge 1990 establishments in Quebec