The days leading up to the Great Depression, were a boom time for real estate speculation in Windsor. Many land brokers and dealers from Toronto to Detroit, opened offices and tried exploiting South Windsor as the ideal location to be, as soon as the Bridge was built. Many companies built model homes, in their sub-divisions only to have the depression crush their projects and leave the surrounding lands vacant. This is still evidenced when driving through a neighborhood of 50’s-60’s era homes, you’ll stumble across a 1920’s era Tudor or two.
As it turned out the land speculation came in handy with the WWII housing shortage. There were ample amounts of failed developments that allowed large scale housing sub-divisions to be built in the 1940’s.
So from the IM.com archives is a plethora of advertisements from 1929.
The “Thoroughly Modern 13 room school” being erected in Marlborough Park, is still there to this day.
Marlborough School was built to educate the children of the throngs of people who would be flocking to the subdivision, and it’s location as a “gateway” to the Steel Mill that was going to be built in Ojibway, which thanks to the depression, never occurred.
Instead of becoming the “Gary of Canada” Ojibway faded as an irrelevant neighboring community, and was annexed by Windsor in the 1960’s.
Crescent Lanes first opened on Ottawa Street in 1944 at 1055 Ottawa Street, opposite Lanspeary…
Above is a photo of the home of Mr & Mrs Oswald Janisse, located at…
in 1917 two Greek brothers Gus & Harry Lukos purchased a one story building on…
Photo from Google Streetview A long time reader sent me an email the other week…
An unremarkable end to a part of Windsor's history. The large vacant house at 841…
One for the lost Windsor files, is this house that once belonged to Joseph Reaume…
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Oh wow, that's crazy. I went to Marlborough School. It's funny to think of it in that light, as in the first building in a booming neighborhood that ended up not happening. That's pretty wild. Like all the other older schools in the area though, it's got a lot of really cool stuff in it. Lots of old wood beams in the gym, lots of really interesting stuff.
BTW, I just found this site earlier this week and I've been hooked on it. Thank you for spending your time doing this site, it's great.
And as well, around superbowl time I was doing some renovations in the old "canadian national bank" on the corner of University and Oulette. You should do a feature on that. The building is INSANE. All marble everything and the old vaults are still there. The owner of the building has a scrapbook of old pictures and stuff, it's pretty cool. There might be stuff here and there on the net.
Thanks Steve, glad you enjoy the site...
That bank has been on my list to cover for a while. I'll try and get a little something up on it next week.
Awesome, that would be great.
Oh, and as well, something of interest for you. There is a new "flea market" style store in lasalle on front road across the street from the Rheaume Chevy dealership. In the back of the place there was a shelf full of what looked like old rolled up blueprints. I didn't get a chance to check out what they are, but if you are in the neighbourhood, check it out.
Steve, thanks for the tip. II went down and checked the place out. They were navigational charts to the great lakes, not blueprints. However when I saw the shelf I knew exactly what you were talking about. It is an "interesting" store, that's for sure.
There's a house on Grand Marais between Mark and Glenwood that must be from these never realized neighbourhoods. It looks like quite an older, grand mansion for the neighbourhood.