page_title: Queen Street (Toronto)
section_title: Yonge to University
hierarchical_section_title: Queen Street (Toronto) / Route / Yonge to University
caption_attribution_description: Queen Street West, looking east towards Yonge Street. Shoppers cross between the Simpsons (right) and Eaton's (left) department stores on opposite sides of the street. (Toronto, Canada)
context_page_description: Queen Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original east-west avenues of Toronto's and York County's grid pattern of major roads. The western section of Queen is a centre for Canadian broadcasting, music, fashion, performance, and the visual arts. Over the past twenty-five years, Queen West has become an international arts centre and a tourist attraction in Toronto.
context_section_description: Since the 19th century, Queen Street West at Yonge Street has been one of Toronto's primary shopping destinations. Originally, the Eaton's and Simpson's department stores faced each other across Queen Street, with the rivalry between the two stores at one time as central to Toronto retailing as the Macy's/Gimbel's competition was to New York City's retail history. The pedestrian crosswalk on Queen Street, just to the west of the intersection with Yonge Street, was for years one of the busiest in Canada, as thousands of shoppers a day comparison shopped between Eaton's and Simpson's.
  Today, Eaton's is gone, but the Toronto Eaton Centre still remains at the same location, one of Canada's largest office and shopping complexes. Simpson's is also gone, but the historic department store building remains on the south side of Queen Street, occupied by the Hudson's Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue stores.
  Further west, this stretch of Queen Street is dominated by institutional and cultural buildings such as Old City Hall, Toronto City Hall, Osgoode Hall and the Four Seasons Centre.
caption: Shoppers crossing Queen Street West in 1910
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