There was very visible progress in the past week of the continuing demolition of the old Eaton’s department store on Portage Avenue.
Two large excavators worked all of last weekend and well past dark each day this week chewing through the entire steel frame and concrete slab construction of the Annex building. Approximately one-third of the Eaton’s block has now been cleared to street level. This space provides an unobstructed area for demolition work crews to quickly sort reusable materials (steel and metals and crushed concrete) from the rubble that is being removed to landfill.
The modern day two-storey Annex building was constructed in 1977-1978 as part of the expansion of Eaton’s downtown store into Eaton Place. That 1970’s modernization necessitated the demolition of the original three-storey “Donald Annex”, a brick warehouse constructed in 1905 and the first Eaton’s building on the block. A second “brick and steel” warehouse fronting on Graham was built in 1909 and it became known as the “Hargrave Annex”.
The unobstructed view now available along Graham Avenue of both the Eaton Powerhouse on Hargrave and the Holy Trinity Anglican Church on Donald has not been seen since the early nineteen hundreds.
As the Annex was being razed, a second work crew removed more of the ceiling of the seventh floor of the Eaton’s store including the entire exterior wall of the seventh floor along the Portage Avenue front of the building. The seventh floor demolition will be complete by the end of November. The top down demolition will then continue with the removal of the sixth floor and the fifth floor.
Contact True North for permission to reprint any of the posted demolition photos or to request other images of the demolition activity.
[MTS Centre Construction Demolition Archive]
