This oriental grocery store on Wyandotte St. W. between Bruce and Church is one of those buildings in town with a secret past.
As featured in the December 31, 1929 issue of the Windsor Star, the building began life as a Nash Dealership.
Other than some relatively small changes to the fenestration, the building looks remarkably similar to how it did when it was built in 1929.
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Andrew, great story...I grew up on Bruce Ave, and passed this building a million times...., and hung out in the park behind it, I would have never have guessed it to be an auto dealership.
Windsor is full of little surprises.......and we appreciate your work discovering them!!
The Old Fish Market/Pogo's/Loop Building started as a dealership as well.
Looks nice. Good to see a building live on. I am so used to giant dealerships, but back then they didn't carry inventory, probably a couple of showroom cars, maybe a demo model, and you ordered one and waited. A small footprint. Of course, I haven't seen too many 08 Nashes running around, so maybe they should have increased the dealership capacity.
It does show that a building can be reused for a different purpose, but likely the floorplan is pretty open, being a dealership with a service area in the rear, no doubt for inventory now. I like that the place is nice and clean, neat awnings, not a bunch of stuff tacked all over the place. They should get an award for preservation.
I have never noticed how styled that building is. Thanks for posting that! Shopped there too!
Great re-use for this beauty. Hopefully we see more of this but I haven't seen much re-use in the last 5 or 6 years.
Hoa Viet is a great place to shop. Very good selection and great prices as well.
Top notch work.
This is a really nice older area of downtown with a lot of buildings with really nice classical architecture. My favourite is the old Essex Linen building, a couple blocks from there at Wyandotte and Caron which was turned into offices..
Walking through this neighbourhood feels a lot like walking through an older part of downtown Hamilton or Toronto. Doesn't even seem like Windsor.
I noticed that tomorrow in downtown Detroit from 11-3pm is Doors Open Detroit. Anyone know if it's similar to Doors Open Windsor. I can't find any other info on it.
Would be very interested in seeing a sneak preview of the Book Cadillac if it's on the list.