Toronto Eaton Centre and Brookfield Place

- Hockey Hall of Fame, Allen Lambert Galleria, Front St, Yonge St, Dundas Square

Eaton Centre, Toronto's leading shopping mall and most popular tourist attraction, has with 235 stores on 3 floors (7 with offices). It is very bright and modern, so it is hard to believe that the first phase opened already in 1977. Eaton Centre was founded by the Canadian depertment store chain Eaton's, now bankrupt, but the name was kept. The main entrance is situated at Dundas Square, along Yonge Street. Underneath the long glass roof, that makes the mall very bright, there are sculptures of birds, and glass enclosed elevators and escalators that take shoppers to the different floors. In the leate 1990s/early 2000s Eaton Centre was redeveloped, expanded, urbanized and modernized. 2010-2015 the whole mall was revitalized with a new floor. There are fountains on the ground floor.

Anchor store is the new Nordstrom department store, and a pedestrian bridge connects it to a historical building, where you find both the brand new branch (2016) of the NY-based department store Saks Fifth Avenue and Hudson Bay (flagship store of Canadian chain), sharing the same roof at the intersection Yonge/Queen. The Swedish clothes store H&M also have a large anchor store here. Three skyscrapers are built on top of Eaton Centre, among them a Marriott Hotel. In 2011 a large food court was built. The Old City Hall is situated right opposite the entrance on James Street.

In 2012 there was a fatal shooting in the food court, leaving two dead and eight wounded!

Further south you the office and shopping complex Brookfield Place (originally called BCE Place) near the Union Station, with landmark skyscrapers, restaurants and the cathedral like Allen Lambert Galleria designed by Santiago Calatrava.This 6-storey galleria is often featured in movie, because of its futuristic appearance, and it is dubbed the "crystal cathedral of commerce". In the middle of the galleria there is a court with glass roof called Sam Pollock Square. In 1904 Toronto Fire several historic buildings in the Brookfield Place block were destroyed. But one of them, the Merchants Bank, was saved, and is now built together with the glass roof of the galleria!

Here you also find the popular Hockey Hall of Fame, a museum about ice hockey and a hall of fame. The building is a beautiful historical former bank building, situated in the busy intersection Yonge St/Front St. At the entrance you find sculptures of hockey players and medals. There is also an entrance at the basement of Allen Lambert Galleria.

The skyscrapers in Brookfield Place are the postmodern TD Canada Trust Tower from 1990, designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill, 4th tallest building in Toronto, and has a significant spire at the height of 263m. Next to it stands Bay-Wellington Tower, that has a similar design but a flat roof. Next to them stands the 41-storey Royal Bank Plaza from 1971, a skycraper with glass windows made of gold (but they had to be replaced because of the heat)!

Both Eaton Centre and Brookfield Place have underground connections to the PATH system, that is the world's most extensive tunnel system.