Today I have a then and now for you that’s going to blow you away…
Behind the new facade of the Janisse Brothers Funeral Home….
… You will find the Leo Page Mansion. (Photo from the Virtual Motor City Project)
A trip around back reveals the truth about what lies behind that modern brick facade.
Original detailing remains on the chimney.
A view from the side shows where old and new meet.
A picture of the Page house from the Border Cities Star in 1924. Leo Page started out as the postmaster of the settlement known as Ojibwa (before being renamed Ojibway in 1913), he also ran a general store in conjunction with the Post Office.
Sometime around 1913, he teamed up with Albert F. Healy and Alberie Chappus to form the Healy-Page-Chappus Real Estate Company. They cashed in on the boom and speculation surrounding the new steel city of Ojibway and sold tons of property in and adjacent to the town. While the metropolis of Ojibway never came to be, the three gentlemen apparently made out alright, judging from the size of Mr. Page’s house.
Of all the subdivisions they carved up, only one remains today as it was laid out. They were responsible for the establishment of Brighton Beach on the Wright Farm. They purchased the farm in 1913 for a reported $225,000, the equivalent of about $4.3 million in today’s dollars.
Today the Healy-Page-Chappus company lives on at least for a little while longer, in the street names of Brighton Beach.
Wow, I didn’t expect that. It looks like something straight out of the Boston-Edison district.
When was the boxy faux-antebellum facade put up on Mr. Page’s modest dwelling?
omg!!! you’re weren’t kidding! i’m totally blown away. wow.
I wonder if they hosted a funeral to the death of what once was a beautiful mansion. I also wonder if the old facade was destroyed, or just buried?
unreal
Wow! I grew up in a (now demolished along with the rest of the neighbourhood) house at the corner of Healy and Reed on property that extended back to Wright Street. A lot of the properties were held by speculators, some in the States – as my father discovered when he spearheaded a petition to have municipal water installed in the area after amalgamation with the City in the fifties. (We got a fire hydrant right across the street which was a good thing when the house burned the following year.) Building was never much more than sparse, nothing like the subdivisions of today, and was pretty much all independantly done. When we bought our “house” in 1949, it was three rooms and a path to which my father added on for decades. I remember one house where the people lived in the basement for a generation or more until someone could afford to put the house on top. There were two big, brick house across Healy from us, two more at the foot of Healy (at Sandwich) and a “fancy” place at the corner of Broadway and Sandwich (on the north side of Sandwich). Most houses were frame; some were – like ours originally – little more than shacks.
I just remember a real shanty town on the beach at the foot of Chappus with blanket doorways and metal Coca Cola sign walls. A girlfriend of mine lived in the one (brick) house actually “on” Chappus, near the river.
Further to my previous comment and rather ironic in a way, Paul Janisse and I have been friends for many years but never knew of the “connection”.
A beautiful old house. It would be nice if a restoration could be undertaken at some point in the future.
I used to live in Broadway just off Linsell across from the Park. We used to BMX in the trails (Yacky Bush!), fish beside that huge boat that was back there for awhile and skate on the pond in there. It was a major pain to walk all the way over to Rum Runners to catch the Crosstown 2. Was a fun place to be until Ford came in closed off Linsell. I went back there a few years ago and all the hills and trails were pretty much flattened or closed off due to some reckless dirt bikes and ATV’s that were wrecking everything. I had no idea of any of the history of the area, good to know.
The “renovation” was undertaken circa 1960. Ouellette Ave. was once lined with stately homes. A cluster of these on the east side of the street between Elliott and HMCS Hunter survived into the mid sixties. The Ursuline Sisters had a convent and music school there composed of three of these large homes connected by additions but still retaining their original character.
Does anyone know about an abandoned steel mill out in Ojibway? My dad used to live out in that area and said that as a kid he and my uncle would go wandering around its ruins. This would have been in the early 1950s. He thought that it was built for use in World War II but was never used/completed. He could never remember quite where it was except out in the bush and after many hours of hunting, I never found anything either. Anyone?
I’ve heard stories too… of a blast furnace… not sure what to think about it.
I really enjoyed your entry. Its amazing how many farms in Sandwich West & South Windsor were carved up into subdivisions and sold to land speculators. They even went through the expense of putting sidewalks through some of them.
I have spent the better part of my Real Estate Career trying to put these pieces of land back together again.
Just imagine what Windsor would have been if that Steel Mill was built…
Peter
The Gary of Canada! Sounds about right.
My grandfather was “Pepe” George Janisse and my father was Vicent Janisse, George’s son. Thank you so much for these pictures and this trip down memory lane. As seven brothers and sisters, we lived in the house directly to the north of the Page home once it was purchased by my grandfather and father. We moved as a family from the original funeral home location in Windsor at the corner of Jeanette and London St. before it was renamed University Ave. The home directly to the south on Ouellette Ave. was owned by my cousins the Pageaus. I have many wonderful memories of the Page building as I was growing up. I eventually worked at the funeral home while I was in school and eventually, both my brothers, Paul and David, and one of my sisters, Michele, went on to become funeral directors. Living right beside the funeral home, I was able to get to know all of the cousins – the Pageaus, Uncle Armand and his sons Al and Frank Janisse as well as the wonderful people who worked as part of the funeral home staff and my extended family over the years. The challenge as always is to find an appropirate balance between preserving our history and being progressive and in tune with the economic demands of the times. These were challenges I watched three generations of Janisse men grapple with. Some of the comments in this blog reminded me of those challenges. Again, thank you for a look at my history. Paulette Kupnicki
Paulette, do you remember which corner your first funeral home was located at the corner of Janette & London St (University Ave)?
Though the old house looks nothing like the original, the reno was doen very well and the building is in very good condition. I would like to thank The Janisse Funeral home for their services in the past and for their dedication to downtown.
The original Janisse funeral home was on the southeast corner of Janette and London St.(University Ave.)
Drove by the other day, and they are preparing to cover the newer, ugly facade with even newer, and uglier STUCCO! help us all. I wonder how tacky they will go with this…
Re an earlier query by MJD, the old steel mill in Ojibway was the Canadian Steel Corp. My grandfather and uncle came from the parent company-US Steel-in Youngstown, Ohio, as building engineers in 1916 and worked on the project until the mid-1920s, a few years before it closed. The mill consisted of two blast furnaces, seven giant “stove” towers, cyclonic dust collectors and a 200-foot chimney. Also on the 1800-acre site was a coal dock and a large slip (now Morton Terminals) which could accommodate lake freighters loaded with iron ore. Along the slip was a large concrete craneway for an unloader crane. It included a long service tunnel which I remember exploring as a west-end kid. I clearly remember the huge rusted blast furnaces but never explored them. Now lost, I used to have Grandpa’s notebook with sketches of the Ojibway mill and the planned residential community (where the raceway and Ambassador Golf Club now sit). Streets, curbs and sewers were installed but no housing was ever built there (we used to discover parts of it when hiking in Yawkey Bush). The end of WWI, the postwar recession and finally the Depression killed the project. Construction ceased and the place was abandoned. Forever cold, the great blast furnaces never poured a single ladle of steel and were torn down for scrap in February, 1958.
Sorry for the length but I love this particular topic and have researched it as part of my family history.
thanks for the story Scott!
If you look on google maps, just inside the curve of the ETR tracks on Morterm property, you can still see the scars those towers left in the earth.
a peek at the BLAST furnaces…via this website.
http://internationalmetropolis.com/index.php?s=blast+furnace
and @ Paulette Kupnicki. I REMEMBER YOU! You worked with my mother in the 80’s. I knew you were connected to the funeral home family, and i also met your daughter Nicole! How ARE you?! Do you have ANY photos of your childhood? Or perhaps the inside of the PAGE/Janisse res.?? I know MANY people who would KILL to see (not only exterior of back then) but moreso the INTERIORS, which we dont often get to enjoy. I also knew a Paul Janisse who lived in East Riverside??? Worked in Tecumseh?
For MJD
In my search tonight, before stumbling on this feed, i remember an article on the History of Ojibway Prairies, and what it COULD’ve been before!
It mentions HUGE prospects of STEEL CITY, and the division and plans for streets in the Brighton Beach area. But due to WWII, it never came to be…and Healy Page Chappus owned all the land, including the best of them ALL! The WRIGHT Farm. Anyways, if you scroll down to about 1917, you will see the area MEANT for the steel mill.
http://www.ojibway.ca/history.htm
Too bad it never happened. Windsor would be a different place today!
another interesting site with a google MAP of Morton area…is the Steel technologies which closed in 2009. If you scroll the map north east, looking for ADM Agri…you will see rectangular OUTLINE of the Scars of the BLAST FURNACES, east of ADM, close to Morterm. http://wikimapia.org/11532749/Steel-Technologies
Notice in Healy-page-Chappus article the spelling of Matchett Road. Not Matchett(e),it was named after my great great grandfather Alfred Mstchett-he was responsible for building of the road and it was named after him.