A sad day for Windsor Saturday as one more piece of our past was lost to the wrecking ball.
As usual of late, a weekend rolls around, and something’s being demolished. Maybe someone out there knows the answer, but why are buildings never demolished during the week?
The Top Hat was one of the few remaining links, back to the days when our Downtown wasn’t set up to only cater to drunk children.
Thanks to Adriano from Windsor Eats for the heads up on the demo.
Photo c. Shawn Micallef
Adriano wasn’t the only one to give me a heads up. Even Shawn Micallef of Spacing Magazine was in Windsor this weekend, when I got a text message from him about the Top Hat coming down.
Photo c. Shawn Micallef
Shawn shot the two photos above, and he sent them to me to share with everyone.
On Monday morning, all was quiet. The Building Eaters were at rest behind the death fences, likely full from their Thanksgiving Dinner.
Irony, at its finest… A Burger King Cup tossed aside into the debris of the Top Hat. As you know, the future of the site is as a Burger King…
Only a few bits remain of the Top Hat. The Tunnel Bar-B-Q, freshly renovated stands out behind, one of the last remaining links to the past, and one of the few downtown businesses with over a half century in the core.
Support what remains, before it’s all gone.
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great shots andrew! i really like the one with the casino in it.
and uh...pic #3, good thing that dude's wearing a hard hat. i imagine it should keep his head safe when the 4 cinder blocks hanging precariously overhead, come down on his head! lol
that all looks so strange. i shouldn't be able to see the chruch....weird.
do we know what's to become of the booger king at the tunnel, or is that going to be another eyesore for us to stare at for years? maybe this new one won't make me want to puke if i ever go there.
and speaking of history being knocked down for crap, i noticed the guy started building on to the stripmall that displaced the BMO. good thing too, i never thought we'd see the new, soon to be vacant extention on that place.
Hate seeing the Top Hat go--for all the reasons mentioned--even closed-up it reminded us of a time when downtown was truly an entertainment district. On my first trip to Windsor back in the early 1990s to stake out the U of W--the Top Hat was the first restaurant I set foot in downtown--it was great--good food set in a museum-like ode to another era--not unlike The Other Place on Dougall.
Damn.
It always looked like a great building and some of the other items, but every time i walked by it, it had a bad odor. This odor got worst as the years progressed, and you can tell its from items that were in the ventalation system from grease and a few other items. It is sad to see it go, but this building has not been able to be sold for a while, and does not look good for the market and would be an outrageous amount to restore and would not always be worth with the value of the building.
The Top hat: more nostalgia than any practical use
In this instance: tear that schitt down!
The Burger King and all of that area is suppoed to be levelled for the expansion of the Tunnel Plaza. But since Windsor doesn't have a dime (yet we are still in talks with Detroit about giving them loads of money to run their side of the tunnel, no NOT OWN IT!) and the fact that traffic volumes are down almost 25% the plaza has been put on hold.
Does anyone have a photo of this "architecturally sensitive" Burger King that's supposed to sprout up on this site that they can post so I know they're not gonna simply put the one across the street on a flatbed and move it over here?
In regards to the question of, why are things demolished on the weekend only, I have a theory that it might be due to reduced disruption of weekday traffic and activity. That was my first guess, at least.
Justine, that's a possible explanation... Be skeptical as I am, I always assume, it's beacuse there's less chance of an inspector coming by, and catching them doing something wrong... :)
David: http://www.travel-tidbits.com/tidbits/HamburgKing.jpg