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Vintage Toronto Ads: Remember 239 Yonge Is Bata
Source: the Telegram, October 12, 1954.
For the downtown stretch of Yonge Street, 1954 was a year of grand openings. The major development was the opening of the city’s first subway line in March, which brought in shoppers to sample the strip’s stores. Less significant, but worthy of being heralded with giant ads, was the opening of an exciting retail concept from a company who had moved their base of operations from Czechoslovakia to Canada just a decade and a half earlier: the shoe department store.
The Bata store at 239 Yonge Street on April 2, 1954, several months before its facelift. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 58, Item 2437.
Based on the photo above, the immediate predecessor of this ultra-modern shopping experience was an average shoe store with a window display of the kind still favoured by long-standing purveyors of footwear around the city.
Source: the Telegram, October 12, 1954.
As with any department store, Bata was divided into specialized departments designed to make each member of the family comfortable while enticing them to buy whatever was on display. Given touches like an aquarium for the kids and posters for teens, we’re surprised they didn’t include a miniature bowling alley in the sports section, a barber in the men’s department, a powder room for the ladies, and a fine selection of language courses on record for the internationally inclined.
Source: the Telegram, October 12, 1954.
The tri-level shoe department store did not prove to be a concept for the ages. By the time they ceased Canadian retail operations in 2005, smaller mall-based stores sans goldfish aquariums were the norm for Bata. Shoppers looking for footwear at 239 Yonge Street today might find a kinky boot at Stag Shop.