Eglinton station back in the day

June 28th, 2012

As you probably already know, E Condos will have an underground connection to Eglinton Subway Station. This is just one of the many changes that Eglinton Station has seen over the years since it opened to the public back in 1954. Let’s take a look back at what it originally looked like in those days.

According to Transit Toronto, when Eglinton Station opened to the public, it was the Yonge subway’s gateway to the northern suburbs of Toronto. Several bus and trolley bus routes converged on this station, carrying passengers to and from the east, north and south, connecting to the subway at a large, multi-platform bus terminal. As you can see from the rendering and photos below, the South terminal housed a large number of buses and trolley buses for routes serving a wide area of the city.

In 1973, the north Yonge subway extension opened, moving the subway’s northern gateway to York Mills and then, in 1974, to Finch. The Yonge and Eglinton intersection grew rapidly along with these changes and office and residential towers quickly popped up and new shopping centres opened.

Out of all the twelve Yonge subway stations, Eglinton is the only one which has retained many of its original vitreous marble tiles.

It will be interesting to see what Eglinton Station will look like in 5 years when E Condos is complete. It will be even more interesting to see what it will look like in 30 years  if  the OneCity Transit plan sees the light of day.