Bay Queen Street Store

The Bay Queen Street Store

This building at Queen and Yonge Streets has an Ontario Heritage Foundation plaque attached to the wall at the main entrance here that says:

Department stores revolutionized shopping in the late nineteenth century by offering selection, low prices and money-back guarantees. In 1895, Robert Simpson commissioned architect Edmund Burke to design his new department store at the southwest corner of Yonge and Queen Streets. It was the first building in Canada with a load-bearing metal frame and a façade clearly patterned on this internal structure. By 1969, Simpson's department store had been enlarged six times and occupied two city blocks between Yonge, Queen, Bay and Richmond Streets. Canada's oldest corporation and largest department store retailer, Hudson's Bay Company, acquired the building in 1978. A Bay store since 1991, it remains one of Canada's great shopping landmarks.

Location Co-ordinates: 43.652286 -79.379332

Photo by Alan L Brown - March 2004

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