OBJECT LESSONS: DOMESTIC INTERIORS ON DISPLAY AT EATON’S TORONTO DEPARTMENT STORES by Susan Haight A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2020 Susan Haight 1 Abstract During the interwar years the T. Eaton Company constructed a number of life-sized model houses and period rooms in their Toronto department stores as a means of marketing furniture and house furnishings. This thesis argues that Eaton’s used these domestic displays in a program of public pedagogy intended to sell Torontonians specific ideas about middle class values as well as tables and chairs, carpets and wallpaper. Advertising, most notably in the Toronto Globe, complemented these object lessons in modern middlebrow domesticity. Starting in the late nineteenth century many furniture retailers in Europe and North America had deployed such displays as marketing tools. Situating this commercial practice in a particular time and place enables a deeper understanding of its cultural meaning. Eaton’s interwar displays reflected corporate imaginings of the local market: Thrift House (1926-1950) was designed to appeal to budget-conscious homeowners, while the Ideal Ontario House (1930-1936) encouraged more affluent Torontonians to buy Canadian made furnishings. The House of To-day (1929) targeted those willing to experiment with innovative art moderne designs. Period interiors featuring English and French historical styles remained a constant, reflecting the popularity of tradition during these decades. Mid level employees, such as interior designers René Cera and Phyllis Stagg, and innovative copywriter Edith Macdonald (known as ‘The Scribe’), used their talents to teach shoppers about the aesthetics of interior design, financial literacy, and the impact of consumer choices on the national economy: a syllabus that reinforced a definition of appropriate middle class consumerism as disciplined desire. ii As a site of display, Eaton’s was linked to more obviously authoritative institutions of public pedagogy in Toronto, such as the Royal Ontario Museum. Through its focus on domesticity and its embrace of public pedagogy as a key marketing technique, the store cultivated an image as a civic benefactor, undercutting contemporary critiques of mass merchandising as essentially deceptive and corrupt. Case studies of the store’s interwar domestic displays reveal successes and failures of Eaton’s bid for cultural authority in a city of homes. iii Acknowledgements Acknowledgements are the most enjoyable part of writing a thesis. The hard graft is done and all that remains is tendering thanks to those who have helped along the way. This project has taken a long time to come to fruition; as a result my intellectual and practical debts are many! My supervisor, Joanna Dean, has been an enthusiastic and helpful supporter of my work from the beginning. The members of the examining committee for the dissertation defense asked challenging questions that will remain with me as I contemplate future directions for my research and writing. My thanks to Deborah Sugg Ryan, Barbara Leckie, Michael Windover, Pamela Walker and Joanna Dean for their thorough reading and thoughtful response to the thesis. Joan White has provided invaluable administrative guidance throughout my time at Carleton University. At various points in my academic career I have received financial assistance through the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program, a University of California Regent’s Fellowship, and a University of Toronto Open Masters Fellowship. The funding provided by these programs is much appreciated. Images of Eaton’s displays and advertisements serve as crucial evidence for my arguments. Permission to reproduce this copyrighted material was kindly given by FTI Consulting Canada Inc. on behalf of Sears Canada Entities. An earlier version of Chapter 5 was published as “Home economies: The T. Eaton Company’s Thrift House, 1926-1950” in Architectures of Display: Department Stores and Modern Retail (2018). I am grateful to Patricia Lara-Betancourt, Anca I. Lasc and iv Margaret Maile Petty for inviting me to contribute to this book and for their editorial advice. My development of the thesis benefitted from audience comments on papers delivered at a number of conferences and workshops: the Underhill Graduate Student Colloquium in history at Carleton University in 2012 and 2014, the Canadian History of Education Association Conference in Vancouver in 2012, the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing held in Copenhagen and the Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution workshop on gender and retailing at the University of Wolverhampton, both held in 2013, the European Social Science History Conference at the University of Vienna in 2014 and the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada Conference held in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 2015. Without publicly available archives and research libraries historians would be in a sad way. My heartfelt thanks to the staff who gave me access to file boxes, runs of magazines and trade journals, and interlibrary loan material at the Archives of Ontario, the MacOdrum Library, Carleton University, Library and Archives Canada, the University of Toronto Archives, the City of Toronto Archives, the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, University of Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum Archives, and the Victoria and Albert Museum Institutional Archives. Undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Toronto, University of California Santa Barbara, and Carleton University allowed me to situate Eaton’s house models and period rooms in broader historical context. My work experience in exhibition development at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal gave me an understanding of the behind the scenes labour v involved in producing and maintaining such displays, albeit in a different component of the exhibitionary complex. While vacationing at the family cottage at Lake Rosseau, our next-door neighbour Roger Simon, then a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, kindly read my thesis proposal. Roger told me that the house models and period rooms were exercises in public pedagogy, an insight that had a profound effect on my subsequent analysis. I wish he were still here to read the final product. Then there are the friends who have given positive reinforcement along the way. In Ottawa: Naomi Kuhn, Henry Schultz and Jennifer Pepall, Sally Coutts and Ian Austen, Jay Khosla and Lisa Lange, Julie Harris, Jane Coutts, Elaine DeCoursey, Joanne Fox, Laurie Erola, Katharine Spencer-Ross, Mary Ormerod, Kay Young and Kate MacFarlane. In Toronto and environs: Adam and Sue Haight, Oliver and Tulimah Kuhn, Caroline Connell and Peter Hill, Paul Litt and Michelle Seville, Jeff Pacek, Rebecca Bentham, Janet Murray, and Moira Ruskell. In Santa Barbara: Carol Genetti and Paul Campbell, Bruce Robertson and Thomas Krens, Jackie Spafford, Mahil Senathiraja, Doug Steigerwald and Julia Lowell, and Karen Osgood. Over the decades I have had many stimulating discussions with Elizabeth Donaldson in Canada and in Europe about design and literature. Special thanks to my friend and teacher, Diane Patterson, who assured me in high school that I could get a Ph.D. if such was my desire. It is traditional to end acknowledgements by expressing gratitude to those nearest and dearest. Unfortunately my parents Jane and Lockwood Haight did not live to see me reach my goal, but growing up with a real estate agent (Jane) and a graphic designer/photographer who designed our mid century modern house (Lockwood) clearly influenced my choice of topic. When my sons were not teasing me mercilessly about the vi length of time the thesis was taking, they provided technical assistance (Alexander) and hugs (Thomas). I have known Roland Kuhn since we were both callow undergraduates at the University of Toronto in the late 1970s. He is my best friend and devoted intellectual supporter, taking care of our children during my extended research trips to Toronto and elsewhere, reading draft after draft, and even dyeing his hair blue when nothing less would convince me to stop procrastinating. At least now I don’t have to worry any more that he will have the dreaded letters ABD carved on my tombstone. This thesis is dedicated to the memories of Edith Macdonald and Phyllis Stagg, women whose contributions to the T. Eaton Company and the shaping of consumer culture in Toronto are no longer hidden from history. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents viii List of Illustrations ix Part I Context Chapter 1 Teaching Modern Domesticity at the Department Store 1 Chapter 2 Customer Relations 61 Part II Taste Chapter 3 Period Rooms: Culture and Commerce 99 Chapter 4 The House of To-day: Marketing Moderne 147 Part III Economy Chapter 5 Thrift House: Good Taste on a Budget 195 Chapter 6 The Ideal Ontario House: Patriotism Begins at Home 246 Part IV Conclusion Chapter 7 Comparison Shopping 283 Bibliography 294 viii List of Illustrations Chapter 1 1.1 T. Eaton Company ad, Toronto Globe, August 19, 1899, 18. 2 1.2 Timothy Eaton residence, interior, c. 1890s. F229-308-0-2282, 4 T. Eaton Company fonds, Archives of Ontario. Chapter 2 2.1 T. Eaton Company retail and manufacturing complex, Toronto, 62 1919. Edith Macdonald [The Scribe], Golden Jubilee, Toronto and Winnipeg: T. Eaton Company, 1919. 2.2 Ross Crane lecture, “Art versus Aunt Matilda – Before.” 83 Photo #658, F229-308-0-2015, T. Eaton Company fonds, Archives of Ontario. 2.3 Ross Crane lecture, “Art versus Aunt Matilda – After.” 84 Photo #659, F229-308-0-2015, T. Eaton Company fonds, Archives of Ontario. Chapter 3 3.1 T. Eaton Company ad, Toronto Globe, April 9, 1913, 18. 108 3.2 ‘Gothic’ room display shown at Eaton’s Spring Housefurnishings 111 Opening, April 1914. Photo #x559, F-229-308-0-2032, T.