Cressman’s through Eaton’s
Fifth in a series looking at how department stores defined the downtown for a century
One of the longest retail frontages on George Street’s Department Store Row was built for the Metropolitan Stores. Peterborough had had a Metropolitan Store since the mid-1930s, located at 371-373 George Street. From the late 19th century to 1920, 373 George Street was home to Benjamin Shortly’s leather work store and workshop. More recently that site known was home to A.B. Collis’s clothing store, there from the 1950s to the 1970s. Akil had several businesses operating from this site in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Metropolitan Stores built a new store at 385-391 George Street in 1955, which was proudly selfpromoted as Peterborough’s most impressive downtown store. There was truth in the claim. The store occupied the entire main floor, and it was comparatively roomy and free of pillars compared to the Victorian buildings of George Street.
The building has good bones, but after Metropolitan Stores left Peterborough around 1970, it served as Top Drug and then Shoppers Drug Mart until around 2005. Since then the building has served for a dollar store and a continuous discount liquidation sale; however, for the last four or five years it has been vacant and has become the saddest sight on George Street.
This location, however, had a strong department store presence for most of its history. The earlier building, which probably dated from the mid-1880s, was adjacent to the Cluxton Building which was built in 1881 at the corner of Hunter and George.
From 1898 to 1927, Cressman’s was the anchor department store. Alva Whiting Cressman (18601934) came from Norwich in Oxford County where he had been operating a successful clothing and millinery store. In September 1898, he arrived in Peterborough where he operated a fashionable “up-to-date dry goods emporium.”
At Cressman’s everything was classy and well-lit. W.W. Johnston supervised the dress goods section, an area in which Cressman was a specialist. In 1898, he was particularly fond of the London line of Priestly’s black dress goods. D.F. Howard managed the staples department, and here the linens came from Wm Ewart & Sons of Belfast. Miss Emmerson presided over the small wares department, which included gloves and hosiery, much from France.
The second floor, with its millinery department, run by Miss Stevens, was reached by “easy stairs.” This was a roomy, well-decorated room with lots of mirrors and lights. Many of the hats were from New York City, and some were not duplicated locally. The mantles department featured some 300 coats from German, New York and Canadian fashion designers.
On the third floor, Cressman’s sold surplus goods from all departments. Within five years, Cressman remodeled his second-floor departments and added the men’s wear department.
A fire which occurred at Cressman’s, Feb. 7, 1903, began in the basement, evidently caused by problems with the furnace or with the electricity. The fire brigade was greeted by dense smoke from the second storey windows of both Cressman’s and Fair’s, although the smoke from Cressman’s was darker. Quite quickly the firemen were shooting three streams of water at the front and two streams at the rear of Cressman’s. Within an hour the fire seemed under control and two streams of water ceased. However, the top flat was suddenly the site of dense fumes at 385, and in 387 the fire was creeping up the walls.
In the Cressman store, the fire damaged the contents in the basement and on the three floors above. The Examiner noted that the fire spread rapidly, and almost immediately after being noticed the fire reached the second floor, blocking the exit for the few workers on that floor.
The fire spread within minutes and yet the employees on the second floor escaped, just ahead of losing the means for escape. There were very few ladies on the second floor and one gentleman in the basement came up the elevator. Both stores were closed for the next while, but opened again at the same location and lasted for many years.
Cressman’s was Peterborough’s classiest department store. The management remained tied to Cressman and his two sons by 1912. Henry Whiting Cressman (1887-1934) was the vice-president, while Frederick (1889-1917) was the secretary-treasurer. and two generations of Cressmans were noted for their artistic taste. At the time of the 60th anniversary of Confederation in 1927, the Cressman’s store was elaborately decorated with bunting.
A.W. Cressman and his family lived in impressive houses over the years. At first they were on Scott Street, next to the home of Aaron Cox, on property that was Trinity Methodist Church by 1914. Then the family lived at 212 Brock Street, one of the impressive houses on the north side near Aylmer.
A.W. Cressman moved to the amazing Prairie architecture house that stretches from Hunter to Homewood along Belmont that was built for him.
Henry married Florence Marjorie Johnston in Merrickville, Jan. 2, 1918 and they lived at 499 Homewood. Mrs. Cressman was the first lady golfer to make a holein-one at the Peterborough Golf Club, then a nine-hole course.
Lieut. Frederick Cressman died at sea in the First World War.
In June 1921, Jessie Cressman married Edward Douglas Huycke, a son of Judge E.C.S. Huycke and a bond dealer in Toronto, at a service presided by the Rev. Edwin A. Pearson.
The family seems to have been affected by the deaths of Frederick and then of Clara Cressman (18601926). Within months of his wife’s death, Alva W. Cressman sold the business to Eaton’s.
Eaton’s operated in the former Cressman store and in the former Turnbull store over the years 1927 to 1932. Eaton’s was developing a chain of small department stores, usually as TECO or as CDS (Canadian Department Store), and both labels were used locally.
After extensive market and architectural surveys, Eaton’s built a grand store at the south-west corner of Charlotte and George, kittycorner from the Market Hall. Very quickly Peterborough’s shopping street began moving southward. Charlotte and George became the new centre of downtown, displacing a half-century run at Hunter and George.
There are several files in the Eaton’s Archives at the Archives of Ontario relating to the Peterborough store between 1927 and 1940. Eaton’s had been around since 1869 and had stores across Canada. Their entry into Peterborough was very systematic. They began with the two main department store spaces on George Street, and built a new store that was an ornament to the street. Eaton’s was only at this important intersection until the 1960s. However, they returned to Peterborough in 1975 to anchor the store at Peterborough Square, and remained there until Eaton’s ran into difficulties. Peterborough Square did not attract the traffic that had been hoped, and Eaton’s expansions of the 1970s played a role in the 1999 bankruptcy.
The site at 385-389 George Street was acquired at some point by the Zacks family which had been operating clothing stores in Peterborough since the 1920s. Among the stores in this building, Agnew Surpass shoe store was the main tenant.
In May 1951, the Zacks building was destroyed by fire. The fire was reported at 5:30 a.m. by a police constable doing his night patrol spotted the yellowish-brown smoke. Then he saw a window blow out into the laneway and smoke and flames climbed the wall. Constable Douglas Farthing also rescued the Philip Gallagher family from their apartment. The fire apparently started in the elevator shaft at the rear of the Zack’s building.
Firemen believed the fire was under control when they entered the back of Riley’s. Several men were trapped when an east-west firewall waved and broke and two upper floors collapsed to the basement around 10:15 a.m. Those trapped included George Reynolds, Orville Rome, Earl Spencley and Grover Deck, the four who died in the blaze, only second to the Quaker fire of 1916 in terms of deaths.
Some 7,000 spectators moved quickly when the fall of the ceiling hitting the floor sent glass and debris flying across George Street. The radio station covered the fire from Clare Galvin’s apartment above his stylish men’s wear store. Mannequins were tossed from the building as if they were dead bodies. Garnet Brown ordered up a dozen pair of gloves and shovels to begin digging in the debris.
Much of the history of Peterborough was tied to the changing fates of its Department Store Row.