Happy Friday the 13th! Today’s old photo is dated March 23, 1965 and bears a Detroit Free Press stamp on the back.
The caption reads:
- Windsor Mayor John Wheelton is beaming
these days as he looks over his bustling town.
There is $25 million worth of building going on …
things like a 500-car parking ramp, for a Downtown
urban renewal project, being started inthe top pic- (caption cuts off)
Here’s Ouellette, north of Wyandotte, on the west side of the street. Look at how packed it was.
Here’s the east side.
What a booming place.
Have a good weekend everyone, see you back here Monday.
Ah, yes, Windsor back in the old days when it was alive, before it became the god awful corpse it is now!
Then the mall was built… with free parking.
And I noticed a sign Tuesday on that former Toronto dominion branch that the building is to be torn down. I worked upstairs in that building at Prudential Insurance in 1970-71.
Looks like a big city!
It was a big city – at least a vibrant mid-sized city!
i haven’t seen ouellette ave this crowed with people since i was a kid back in the 60’s i laugh king eddie has a youtube video out that has him selling the city as a retirement community and he says WELCOME TO WINDSOR A VIBRANT CITY AN EXCITING CITY ya right he better look up the word vibrant because downtown windsor is anything but
Hey Aaron not to get off topic but the other day i was on the bus southbound at ouellette and wyandotte i happened to find a ghost sign over top of what was once the GITLINS store it’s not very big but it says GITLINS in faded red paint
I remember a large multi-storied parking garage downtown beside a new Steinburg’s department store. I believe that the Steinberg’s had Windsor’s first escalator in it. Great find Andrew.
This is a stupendous find! Thanks Andrew!
I see the Radio Tavern sign behind the Pacific Loans sign. Cool.
The Gitlins store was Meresky & Gitlins furnture store one of the old family owned stores like Baum & Brody, and others that dissapped from downtown.
This all happened before Eddy and the present council where old enough to VOTE. Blame the people that DID NOT support the Downtown.
The multi-storied parking building is still their only now its across the road from the courthouse.
The Radio Tavern was agoing concern back in the fiffties
Downtown Windsor has been dead loooongsince beforeEddie Francis, so don’t be soo shortsighted as to blame him for it all, like someone else previously said Devonshire mall had a huge negative impact. The city has been trying to figure out how to undo this wrong ever since and many mayors have came and went.
I really hope that in my lifetime I can see the downtown become lively again and I’m in my 30’s, hopefully that can happen.
I too remember Ouellette Ave very bustling in the fifties and sixties. Indeed it really was
a proper “downtown” in those days a bit like Lo ndons’ Oxford Street today but on a smaller scale. It was good to note the Radio Tavern sign in the photo. I used to go in there for a drink or six after coming back from a “window shopping” trip to Detroit. Although I was under age, like 18 or 19, they didn’t seem to care….lucky me. They were good times back then!
I like all of the store signs. Now they are grossly plain (ie: Rear illuminated boxes with no style); unless of course you are on the DWBIA board and then you will have some things done to your building complimants of the other members of the DWBIA financial contributions that they are focred to pay…we know who you are!
Ken i’m not blaming it on eddie it’s just that it’s not the way that he’s trying to sell it to the public your only in your 30’s well it will never be the way it was back then if you were able to see it the way it is in the photos it would blow your mind the way it’s been degraded hell! Ottawa st and Tecumseh road have more character and vibrancy than ouellette does
I remember going downtown with my dad in the 60’s and my job was to find a parking spot, yes parking on the street, even Ouellette, as you can see in the photos. Maybe in this car town that’s a necessity. It added to the fun of going downtown, along with the great retail shopping we had back then.
Robert,
The misconception of no parking downtown is what still irks people. There is so much parking available downtown and most of it is free for the first hour (in the garages).
The DWBIA has yet to dis-spell this rumour and I don’t know why they don’t start a campaign.
Devonshire mall does have free parking but do people realize that once you park in the vast parking lot (with smaller and smaller spaces) you are futher from your destination (ie store in the mall) than if you were to park downtown and walk a small block?
The problem is perception. People see the mall as one entity, not realizing that they are still walking to their store from where they parked. Whereas downtown you do not see your destination until you go around a corner or walk up to the store.
It is closer to park downtown than it is to park as the mall!
But I digress. I say bring back on street parking and on the side roads such as Chatham or Pitt, put angled parking so more cars can fit on the street.
Dave………THANK YOU!
The mall covers 65 acres. Lay that over downtown and this is
Basically what you’re looking at:
Northside along Riverside:
Goyeau to Bruce
Westside along Bruce:
Riverside to just short of Wyandotte
Southside:
Bruce to Goyeau, give or take
And then back to the drive.
I took these rough measurements with the ruler tool on wikimapia,
but you get the idea. It covers, with room to spare, anywhere you want
to go downtown!
Interesting the way they doctored the photo. I guess with low-resolution black-and-white print you could get away with blurring and highlighting by hand.
Fond memories. I remember cruising down to the foot of ouellette where the big xmas tree stood with family. Loved shopping down there when I lived downtown in the 80s. Sad how Detroit’s downtown and many others ended up like ours as people drifted more and more to the burbs. : (
How do you mean doctored the photo?
Around the Mayors head. But I don’t think its doctored, but just the negative getting messed up.
The right half of the pic obviously appeared in the article. See the red marker lines splitting the picture? The blurring of the picture around the mayor’s head highlighted his profile, while the drawn in areas and lines visible in the 3rd picture show either outlining or differentiation between the subjects in the photo. That’s what I meant by doctored. Anyone have any input these observations?
The process of printing a photograph in the newspaper at the time resulted in low resolution pictures. The photo had to be engraved unto a metal plate by reshooting it through a screen to break the image into dots. The engraved metal plate was then placed in a frame encasing the metal type consisting of the story text. An impression was made of the page and it was used as a mould to cast the final curved lead plate which was bolted onto the press. Needless to say a lot of fine detail was lost in the procedure and more disappeared as the plate wore down with the thousands of impressions in the actual printing. Pictures were touched up in the pre-press procedure. White washes were used to highlight areas such as the edge of shoulders of the pedestrians in the background. Also a black ink would reinforce fine lines that might disappear. Go into a newspaper library and you’ll find plenty of strange pictures of fine-looking women with blackened lips, little Grouch Marx like eyebrows and white-washed ears.
Another factor in the Wheelton picture is the photogapher obviously submitted a landscape shot of Ouellete Avenue but the editor who planned the page used the shot as a head and shoulders. The vertical red cropping mark cut the pic in half, including a pedestrian. More whitewash was used to remove the distracting half-body parts and other troublesome details. The cutline indicates there was a second picture, unseen here, which probably made up for the lost street details. While you could say the pic was “doctored”, the news photographer probably said his or her work was “butchered” and today we would say it was “photoshopped. “
the parking garage beside Steinberg’s was the City market on Saturdays on the first floor. There was also a parking garage on Pellissier street between Park and Chatham I think or maybe it was Pellissier and Wyandotte.
What a great opportunity for a constructive discussion about downtown. I, too, remember spending entire Saturdays in downtown Windsor. Music Lessons with the Sisters on Ouellette, a stop by the Carnegie Library, sewing lessons at the Singer store. Maybe my friends and I would walk down to Smiths or Bartlets, with a stop at the Scotch Wool Shoppe. We would eat at Lyttles Tea Room. Later I liked a place called The Calico Cat which was in the Norfolk Building. There were daytime things to do. Perhaps having students downtown will develop that market.
On the subject of parking—I find the garages, both Chatham St and Pellissier convenient but appallingly filthy and neglected. I can’t imagine what someone from out of town would think about parking and riding in the elevator, or walking down the nasty stairs. Those buildings need to be power washed if you think people will park there more than once.
I kinda remember that the old city market was in the block that the present police station is. Steinbergs-Miracle Mart was where the the courthouse is I think.The parking building is between Pitt and Chatham,on Goyeau st.
for the life of me i don’t know why the city did away with on street parking on Ouellette Ave
gary, I’m not sure why they did away with it, but with Patios, it won’t be back any time soon.