There are three office towers, while the main retail mall in the centre is organized around a long arcade, running parallel to Yonge Street.

By the 20th century, the Eaton's chain owned most of the land bounded by Yonge, Queen, Bay and Dundas streets, with the notable exceptions of Old City Hall and the Church of the Holy Trinity.

As the chain's warehouse and support operations were increasingly shifting to cheaper suburban locales in the 1960s, Eaton's wanted to make better use of its valuable downtown landholdings.

Eaton's sought to demolish Toronto's Old City Hall (except for the clock tower and cenotaph) and the Church of the Holy Trinity.

After a fierce local debate over the fate of the city hall and church buildings, Eaton's put its plans on hiatus in 1967.

[7] In early 2014, mall management began an effort to enforce usage of the full "Toronto Eaton Centre" name.

The same year, the north end of the complex added a multiplex cinema, Cineplex, at the time the largest in the world with 18 screens.

The complex was oriented inwards, with very few street-facing retail stores, windows or even mall entrances to animate the exterior.

Much of the Yonge Street façade, facing what was once one of Toronto's primary shopping thoroughfares, was dominated by nine storey parking garage.

Today, the Eaton Centre is one of North America's top shopping destinations, and is Toronto's most popular tourist attraction.

One year, the management of the centre decided to decorate the geese with red ribbons for the Christmas season, without consulting Snow.

Sears Canada converted the uppermost four floors of the nine-storey department space to corporate offices, replacing their previous headquarters at 222 Jarvis Street, and the lowest floor was converted to mall retail space, but the resultant four-level department store was still Sears' largest in the world at about 75,981 square metres (817,850 sq ft).

[12] In the place of the garage and of a vacant development site on the southeast corner of Dundas and Bay streets, a new wing of the Toronto Eaton Centre was opened in 2006, containing Canadian Tire and Best Buy, with Toronto Metropolitan University's Faculty of Business and a new parking garage with 574 spaces[13] on the upper levels.

[15] In June 2010, a would-be shopper was filmed shouting at the locked doors of an entrance to the Eaton Centre, which was in the process of entering lockdown as the G20 Summit street protests loomed nearby and was later uploaded to YouTube.

[17] Others were injured in the panic as people fled the area, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman who began undergoing labour but did not give birth.

[23] Husbands was granted a new trial in July 2017 as the Ontario Court of Appeal stated the judge had made a mistake in their decision to deny "rotating triers" in selecting the jury.

"[25] They are making the case that his actions were a result of disassociation, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), caused from being stabbed 20 times earlier that year, and therefore should not be held criminally responsible for the casualties and assaults.

In January 2014, Hudson's Bay Company announced it would sell the Hudson's Bay Queen Street complex, including the Simpson Tower offices and Queen Street West location of its namesake department store, to Cadillac Fairview and lease the site for 25 years.

[5] After the sale closed, the Queen Street complex department store space was renovated to accommodate the first Canadian location of Saks Fifth Avenue, a chain also owned by Hudson's Bay.

[5] The pedestrian bridge over Queen Street linking the Eaton Centre and the Hudson's Bay store, which had been in service since the 1970s, was replaced by a new skywalk that opened in 2017.

The Toronto Eaton Centre was closed during June 2020 amid both the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests and reopened in July 2020.

On the evening of September 20, 2022, a multi-vehicle fire occurred in the upper levels of the mall's parking garage and shoppers had to be evacuated.

[31][32] From late 2023 to early 2024, the first floor of the former Nordstrom was used as a temporary exhibit themed to the aurora borealis called Canadian Chroma.

[34] As part of a $120 million renovation, the Eaton Centre replaced the aging food courts at each end of the mall with one larger new food court in the north, which opened in September 2011, and a relocated and expanded Richtree Market restaurant at the south end, which opened on September 9, 2013.

Some of the more notable restaurants in the Eatery include A&W, Chick-fil-A,[37] KFC, McDonald's, New York Fries, Sbarro, Subway, and Tim Hortons.

[35][38] There are no garbage or recycling receptacles in the Urban Eatery; patrons bring their food trays to staffed collection stations, where items are sorted.