Marc Glassman: I went the first week, out of curiosity. The store, which opened in November 1980, was far bigger than anything the city had ever seen, encompassing 64,000 square feet and boasting 17 miles of shelves.ĭavid Cole: It opened up with a major splash, a ton of hoopla. Article contentĬole paid $2.4 million for a building that had previously housed the 10-pin Olympia Bowling Alley. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. With the store’s final chapter coming to an end, we asked former employees, writers, and members of the publishing industry to reflect on the biggest bookstore Toronto has ever seen and, let’s be honest, will ever see again. It’s unsurprising, then, that a little more than a week from now the store will close its doors for the last time. Yet, in recent years, as ownership changed from Coles to Chapters to Indigo, the store became an anachronism in a city that has not been kind to bookstores, in an area of town that looks far, far different than it did in 1980. in the heart of downtown Toronto has been an iconic store, a literary salon, a community space, a tourist trap, and a place you could lose yourself for hours among the endless shelves. For the past 34 years, the red-and-white box on Edward St. Join the conversation Tyler Anderson/National Post Article contentĭespite its name, it was never actually the world’s biggest bookstore.
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