A few more from the old photo album. The page is noted as Bob-Lo (Bois Blanc) opposite Amhersburg Canada. July 1920.
Dance Hall
Souvenir Hall
One of the many Baby Hammocks
Anchor
Merry-go-round Hall
Base-ball Diamond
Dance Hall
840
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The Albert Kahn dance pavillion is an absolute gem–in the winter it’s plainly visible driving along the river west of A-burg. Would love to see that building come back to life and to see more public use of the island to go along with it’s redevelopment.
Is Bob-lo open to the public, or is it a closed community now? It would be very interesting to go there now and see some of these old spots.
Both buildings still exist. Teh merry-go-round hall became the snack hall in the ’70s and ’80s.
I sure miss Bob-lo and all of the fun I had there as a kid.
It’s always been unclear to me if people can take the ferry over to Boblo and walk around. I’ve heard differing reports, and the boblo.ca site does not hide the fact that they are a “gated community like no other.”
The fellow who runs this boblo website below has some great recent pictures of the old buildings on the island. It’s a bit awkward to navigate, but it answered a lot of questions as to what is left over there.
http://www.boblosteamers.com/start.html
Those big buildings — the Kahn pavilion, some of the smaller ones — were great and had a strange calming effect. Probably due to the liminal environment of Boblo itself, but i can remember the feeling of being around them like it was last week, not 15 years ago.
Yep, Boblo Island including the pavilion is private property like one big condo corporation. Even the ferry service is privately run with secured access entry from the article I read on it. Don’t know where the webpage is anymore. But, I guess if you told them you were interesting in buying a condo, they might let you view the premises.
What the City of Windsor should do is open up Peche Island by public ferry access like Toronto Island or sell it to some outsiders to put some kind of amusement park or casino on it.
These buildings, and others, still stand today. None, unfortunately, have bee designated yet.
Family members have taken the ferry to drive to the restaurant on the island, so you can at least see a narrow slice of the island as long as you are headed there (I intended to see if I could go, with the excuse of checking out the blockhouses if asked, but never had to time to do so).
David mentioned Peche Island. Wasn’t there an attempt in the late ’60’s to do a tourist type development on the island in the late ’60’s? I seem to remember that you could do a commercial boat ride to (or around) the island from both Windsor and Detroit.
David mentioned Peche Island. Wasn’t there an attempt to do a toruist type development on the island in the late ’60’s. I remember one could take a commercial boat raide around the island from both Windsor and Detroit.
1962-1969 Ed Harris bought Peche Island and started an island playground with ferry service from Dieppe Park, but went bankrupt. It’s demise probably had something to do with Detroit’s mass exodus of businesses to the suburbs and avoidance after the riots in 1967. Then, the Province of Ontario bought it and later gave it to the City of Windsor and it’s been a neglected municpal park for boaters ever since. It’s a 110 acre island with a bunch of canals going through it.
In 1883, Hiram Walker owned it and it still has the remains of Hiram Walker’s 52 room summer mansion that burned to the ground in 1929, but the foundation is still there and so is his stone bridge. It has a lot of history. More about it with a map at http://www.walkervilletimes.com/curse-peche-island.html
I’d pay a $5-10 fare for city ferry service to the island.
“It’s a 110 acre island with a bunch of canals going through it.”
Sounds dreadful — pave it over.
An easier way for people to get to the island as is would be nice though. It’s a short canoe ride, but the Detroit River is fairly strong so (somebody who has done this correct me if wrong) it would take some skill to navigate over.
The TO islands here benefit from a huge population who don’t have cottages but who need some city-escape now and then. In Windsor I always felt because it was a smaller city and proximity to the rural hinterland was often a bike ride away, the need for cottage-esque gettaway’s was less. So would people pay for a ferry trip when they could drive to Point Pelee? Or would they pay more than once, after the novelty wore off, to make it economically viable?
I went over to Boblo Island about a year ago for a service call. It’s definitely a gated community…with no gates. You can’t just go over there to look around. I was only able to access the housing developments. The houses there are very boring to look at…I wasn’t impressed. It looks like your typical cookie-cutter subdivision, except the houses are larger in size. I was expecting a LOT more.
Thanks so much for the BB Island posting,especially with the B+W period shots.
I once visited Peche Isle by kayak, and travelled to the island with the guidance of an experienced kayaker on a completely calm day. It would be nice if the public could travel by public transit, but I think it’s best left alone, to keep trash left by visitors ruininng what’s left of the sort of “wild” state it is in now,
We went to the island last summer. We told them we were going to the restaurant, paid $5 to cross (round trip), then proceeded to drive around the island and check things out. No one said a word to us. It was very sad to see how overgrown and unkempt the old amusement park area has become. I long for the old days…
The old Dance Hall on Bob-Lo Island was not built by Henry Ford nor was Albert Kahn the architect. Kahn was one of two people who vied for the position, but it was John Scott who was awarded the contact and built the largest dance pavilion in North America in 1913.
As for Peche Island, there has been several attempts to do something with the island, but all have failed. It is said that Rosalie Laforest got down on her knees and cursed the Walkers and the island when forced to leave her home by Hiriam Walker’s men in 1883 wailing, “No one will ever do anything with the island!”