past pieces of toronto: bata headquarters
From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on April 8, 2012. Bata Headquarters, Don Mills, circa 1965-1969. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 217, Series 249, File 356, Item 023. Thomas Bata was proud that the Don Mills headquarters of his shoe empire was designed so that it couldn’t be expanded. He believed that the role of headquarters was not to dictate corporate policy, but to act as catalyst for stimulating new approaches to marketing and product development. “In outlining our specification to the architect,” he wrote in his autobiography Bata Shoemaker to the World , “we insisted that the building should be designed so that, if we were ever tempted to spawn a huge bureaucracy, we would be thwarted by the lack of space and immovable walls.” While Thomas Bata’s vision was fine as long as his company retained the p...