T. Eaton Company Catalogue Houses and Amazon
By Richard Dowson, Moose Jaw
A friend told me, “With computers, Amazon and the Internet, it’s a new world!”
Well, that ain’t so Joe!
The T. Eaton Company Ltd. Department Store was Amazon long before Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, the e-commerce company, was started in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington.
The difference – Eaton’s printed their mail-order Catalogue. The Amazon catalogue is on the Internet.
History
The T. Eaton Company was a retail and catalogue sales company, started in Toronto in 1869 by Northern Ireland immigrant Timothy Eaton. He started with four employees. The company became a Canadian retail institution with its many stores and catalogue service.
Eaton’s began as a ‘cash only’ retailer’. There were no credit cards in those days. Their motto was, “Goods Satisfactory or Money Refunded.”
The Eaton’s catalogue began as a small, printed booklet in 1884. As the company grew more successful, the catalogue expanded to serve all regions of Canada. The west, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were served by the mail-order catalogue warehouse in Winnipeg.
Some of the pre-fabricated houses offered by the T. Eaton Company
See – just like Amazon distribution warehouses.
Customers could buy almost anything from the Eaton’s catalogue, including farm implements, clothes and pre-fabricated houses, that became known as Eaton Catalogue Houses.
Amazon does not sell pre-fabricated houses.
Eaton’s shipped pre-fabricated houses to a rail siding at the destination. The purchaser paid the freight; picked up the material off a flat-car, took it home and put it up.
Many Eaton’s Catalogue Houses were built in Moose Jaw.
History of Eaton’s Catalogue Houses
Eaton’s sold pre-fabricated home from 1910 to 1932. The customer selected the home and floor plan form the catalogue. The customer could choose different flooring.
The prefabricated ‘Kits’ were easy to erect. Plumbing and heating was not included. That had to be sourced locally.
The ‘Earlsfield’, double gambrel roof design was very popular and is my favorite design.
The Earlsfield
“An Earlsfield in the 1916 plan book cost $887.50 delivered to the nearest railway siding and from there it was up to you to get to the final location.
That’s for the lumber and any extras incurred additional shipping costs, but still, it was cheap. Heating and plumbing added an extra $240.” (From Les Henry, SEE:Les Henry: United Grain Growers' mail-order home business - Grainews)
Earlsfield house located at 380 Ominica Street East - MJ Independent photo
This Earlsfield house is at 380 Ominica Street East, Moose Jaw. The current owner bought the house in 1989. It has been beautifully maintained.
It seems there are other T. Eaton Co. Catalogue Houses in the 300 block of Ominica Street East.
Reference: The ultimate reference is Les Henry’s wonderful book “Catalogue Houses”. Les died in 2024. As seems fitting for a good Saskatchewan boy, he wrote his own obituary.
Writer Richard Dowson is a retired educator.
He is known for his frequenting local coffee shops and other places seniors gather.
In a previous life he wrote comedy for CHED in Edmonton.