Ouellette & University

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• Not only the shops but look at the buildings. Great shape and no stucco!

• The postcard must be from 1962 as there is a 1962 Mercury Comet waiting at the light. Regardless of the year, I remember many a shoping trip with my mother and sister downtown to Bartlets, Smiths Adelmans untill the early 70's. Oh, I must not forget those glazed donuts from the lunch counter at Kresges! Yes the downtown is dead and we can't count on Edgar and his council to revive it.

• Isn't that the Bata shoe store on the left, if so, I remember shopping there in the mid 70's and when they went out of business! The lunch counter at Kresges was a city institution, I remember it, my mother and grandmother remember it as thee place to have lunch! And their deli counter always provided a fresh to go selection.

• Don - you're probably right, I was just guessing at the year as the card isn't postmarked.

  Urbanrat - That is the Bata Shoe store. When I was in Europe last fall, I was surpirsed to see what a strong retail presence the Bata shoe brand still has.

• I would say this photo is taken in 1964 - 66. look at the building infront of the guardian building downtown Detroit (white building) on the right.. that building was completed in 1963 .

• This is the downtown I remember as a young child.

  And yes, Kresge's! I remember the donuts at the front counter and those squeaky wooden floors. I remember my mother taking me shopping at a store that had an elevator operator who pulled the door shut by hand. I seem to recall that it was just off of Ouellette, perhaps on Pitt or Chatham.

• Is there a resource available that would list all the retail businesses that were open in the retail area of Downtown Windsor in, say, 1963?

  One of the problems that downtowns had in the mid-late '60's through the mid 70's or so was the decline of national chain small store dry goods (well, major goods for that matter) retailers.

  To climb back over to my side of the river for an example, staple companies like Wolhl Shoes, Edison Brothers, National Shoe, Good Houskeeping, S.S. Kresge, F.W. Woolworth and other staples of downtown retail not only pulled up and moved to the mall, they pulled up and went out of business completely, or changed their focus so much tratditional downtown retail was not their focus anymore.

  This is by no means an implication that it doesn't bother me to see a downtown go to rack and ruin. In my 40 year retail career, I much prefered to work a downtown store than a mall shop, BUT when people start wishing downtown was as vibrant and alive in the same way it was in 1963, it's not gonna happen. It's 2008 and times, people and the shopping environment are different.

  There is great hope for downtowns. Ferndale, Royal Oak and Birmingham are excellent examples of recovered shopping districts. But out here where I live, when the regional department store shuttered it's downtown location, the DBA was 10 years fighting the "There's no reason to go downtown anymore since (fill in name of business here) shut down" syndrome even though (fill in name of business here) shut down because they didn't go downtown to begin with.....

• City directories contain list of all business. The Central Library on Ouellette has them available for research. The Museum on Pitt Street (Baby House) also has them dating back to the late 1800s.

• This is the downtown Windsor my folks talk about nostalgically, where you could get anything you wanted. I know a lot of people from Windsor used to shop over in Detroit back then, but my parents were new to the city and lived not far from downtown. To this day my dad will insist that Smith's department store carried the finest men's clothes money could buy. Too bad our current municipal leaders can't see how much of an asset our downtown could be if only they would take action. They are doing to downtown Windsor what George Bush did to the American economy.

• This picture brings back memories... I recall controversy and apprehension when the Sentry Mall, Dorwin Plaza.... were announced and what consequently would happen to the downtown.
  Does anyone remember the streetside underground washrooms which were located downtown?