Jim Addison didn't come to Canada to open a store selling antique plumbing fixtures. When he arrived from Scotland in 1965, it was to work as a master plumber, but he found an allure in the history of Toronto, particularly in the collecting of fixtures he found while working as a plumber.
Three short years later, Jim opened the antique plumbing store Addison’s Inc. to showcase the many fixtures he had discovered around the city. The collection grew so large that he moved it to a warehouse on Wabash Street, where it still stands today, over 50 years after Jim opened his first shop.
The Wabash location has a massive main floor with three rooms featuring thousands of items such as clawfoot tubs, sinks and other beautifully kept antique fixtures. Stroll upstairs and you'll find furniture from bygone eras. Downstairs, you’ll find an array of antique doors and highly sought after antique radiators.
“This beautiful store just grew,” says Becky Addison, Jim's daughter and one of the current owners. “[My father] started branching out from the antique plumbing fixtures. He started to make it more like a museum. People will walk in and wonder if things are for sale or if it’s a museum.”
