Located on Albert Street, directly behind the Eaton's Main Store and Toronto's (now former) City Hall

Old City Hall (Toronto)

Toronto's Old City Hall was home to its city council from 1899 to 1966 and remains one of the city's most prominent structures. The building is located at the corner of Queen and Bay Streets, across Bay Street from Nathan Phillips Square and the new City Hall in the centre of downtown Toronto...

, the Eaton's Annex was a 10-storey building containing both retail and office space. By 1900, the Eaton's

Eaton's

The T. Eaton Co. Limited was once Canada's largest department store retailer. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices across the globe, and a catalogue...

 department store owned almost all of the lands within the city blocks bordered by Yonge Street

Yonge Street

Yonge Street is a major arterial route connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. It was formerly listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest street in the world at , and the construction of Yonge Street is designated an "Event of...

, Queen Street West

Queen Street West

Queen Street West describes both the western branch of Queen Street, a major east-west thoroughfare, and a series of neighbourhoods or commercial districts, situated west of Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Queen Street begins in the west at the intersection of King Street, The...

, Bay Street

Bay Street

Bay Street, originally known as Bear Street, is a major thoroughfare in Downtown Toronto. It is the centre of Toronto's Financial District and is often used by metonymy to refer to Canada's financial industry since succeeding Montreal's St. James Street in that role in the 1970s...

 and Dundas Street, and the land was occupied by the Eaton's Main Store, the Annex building and various Eaton's warehouses and mail order buildings. The Main Store and the Annex, however, were the only two buildings open to the public. In 1900, the two buildings were connected by an underground passageway open to both employees and shoppers. It was the first underground pathway in Toronto open to the public, and is often credited as a historic precursor to Toronto's current downtown PATH

PATH (Toronto)

PATH is a network of pedestrian tunnels beneath the office towers of Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. According to Guinness World Records, PATH is the largest underground shopping complex in the world with 371,600 m² PATH is a network of pedestrian tunnels beneath the office towers of Downtown...

 network.

When it was first constructed in the 1890s, the Annex contained Eaton's housewares and furniture departments. When these departments were moved to the new College Street store

College Park (Toronto)

College Park is a shopping mall, residential and office complex located on the southwest corner of Yonge Street and College Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada...

 in 1930, the focus of the Annex's retail offerings was shifted to lower-cost offerings. While the Main Store catered to middle class budgets, and the College Street store's offerings were more upscale, the Annex store was directed to Toronto's working classes. It offered many of the same departments and types of goods as Eaton's other two Toronto stores, but in cheaper varieties, and with less extensive in-store displays and customer service. As such, the Annex represented one of the first instances in Canada where a traditional, full-line department store operated a separate discount outlet or chain.

The Eaton's Annex and some surrounding warehouses were destroyed by fire on May 9, 1977. The fire was described as "the first of its kind in downtown Toronto since the Great Fire of 1904"; although it destroyed a number of Eaton's buildings and damaged the nearby Church of the Holy Trinity, it did not significantly affect the newly-constructed first phase of the Toronto Eaton Centre

Toronto Eaton Centre

The Toronto Eaton Centre is a large shopping mall and office complex in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, named after the now-defunct Eaton's department store chain that once anchored it. In terms of the number of visitors, the shopping mall is Toronto's top tourist attraction, with around one...

.

A portion of the Bell Trinity Square office complex currently occupies the former Annex site. The same underground passage that formerly linked the Annex and the Main Store now connects the Eaton Centre to the Bell Trinity Centre, and is part of the PATH network.

In honour of this store, a hill at the Caledon Ski Club, in Caledon Ontario, was named "Eaton's Annex" after the Eaton family who were original members of the private club.