From the Library of Congress site, comes this view of the Walker’s Distillery office. The pergola in the foreground was demolished in the early 1920’s when the offices on the west half of the property were built. Interesting to note the cobblestone street, and streetcar tracks in front along Riverside Drive.
Hope everyone had a good weekend.
I read somewhere, that”old Walkerville” had the first steretcars in North America! Could this be varified??
Why are there words right across the middle of the picture?
AH! if we could only have that today street cars and less traffic on the drive Aaron do you know how far the tracks went east on the drive?my first wife grew up on frank avenue in riverside and she said she remembered playing on tracks that ran along clairview
if you go east on ontario street at devonshire past that little cafe on the corner right about where the road curves to the right to go south to wyandotte there are a couple spots that look like cobblestonestheir patialy covered with real bad ashalt i wonder if those are original or one of the city’s fouled attempts at paving
also in the same above mentioned spot behind Walkers there are a couple sections of track in the concrete like you would have on a street i think these are left over from the days when the PM/C&O switched the distillery
gary, do you mean Assumption St, and not Ontario?
For the Streetcar, it ran east along the drive until Strabane. It turned south there, then east on Wyandotte, right down the center. It cut off Wyandotte, running on Clairview (I don’t know if Clairview even existed as a street at the time and was just a ROW)till about where the city marina is. Then it paralleled the drive to Lesperance, turned south and ran on it’s own ROW on the west side of Lesperance. Ever notice how far back the houses are set on the west side of Lesperance? There was an open ditch where the sidewalk is, then the ROW, then whatever houses were there at the time.
Andrew, I forgot to ask. In the open grassy area where the pergola is, wasn’t that where H.W’s “cottage” sat? When did that come down?
r.badder – it’s debateable wheather or not it was the first in North America, but the stretch from Windsor to Walkerville was certainly the first electrified system in Canada.
Detroiters used to come here just to experience the novelty of riding on it! I think as early as 1872, Windsor already had tracks in place, but the cars were pulled by horses. And beleive it or not, for a very short time the trolley cars were even pulled by a steam locomotive! Can you even imagine that?!?! A steam locomotive, putzing along the city streets?!
Something that bothers me is Wikipeidia. It claims that the streetcars in St. Catherines
were the first IN THE WORLD…with a starting date of 1887. If that start date/first on the planet stuff is true, then in was infact WINDSDOR with the first in the world, with an electrified start date of 1886.
@Aaron, one of the benefits of Wikipedia is that you can have inaccuracies corrected either though editing or reporting, which you can do yourself.
Yeah I know…..but I don’t have any linkable evidence. All I have is paper books
Meh…maybe I can find something.
Further to D. hand’s comment about your logo across the pictures – there might be some justification if international metropolis were the owner/originator of the material. However, since you are just “borrowing” much of the imagery, a more appropriate identifier would be to return to your old format- a discrete logo in a top or bottom corner which would not detract from the image.
Agreed……it’s really messing up my wallpaper LOL!
Devonshire still has cobblestones underneath the asphalt. I remember it well before the city paved it around 2000 or so. Most cobblestones last longer than crappy asphalt ever will, yet…..we still cover it up. *sigh*
yes Aaron my bad your right it’s Assumption i was thinking of i was at 920 Ouellette this morning to visit a friend and on the wall near the elevators they have a couple prints one is the train station in windsor and the other is the corner of ouellette and Wyandotte street there’s a street car in the painting and it put me in mind of this right away i think it said the first street cars in this area not in canada i’m assuming the street car track must have ran north/south up devonshire then continued up wyandotte can’t see it going over the peabody bridge as far as the tracks running down Lesperance rd that makes sense with houses far from the road i had a girlfriend that lived on Lesperance and behind her house was a ditch /canal that ran n/s to the river just before that curve in the drive before Lesperance just past the old rendevous tavern thanks for the posting Aaron
It did go over the Peabody bridge I have a copy of a photo showing it at the top of the Peabody bridge. I will try to find it so I can referance were it came from !!!
mike is right gary. The streetcars did travel over the peabody bridge on the north side of it. Let’s see if this works……
[IMG]http://postmediawindsorstar.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/1256.peabody2.jpg[/IMG]
if it didn’t:
http://postmediawindsorstar.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/1256.peabody2.jpg
What I don’t think it did was go thru the PM/C&O subway. Although a map of the system I have has “wyandotte street diversion” marked in it. But then the line just ends there.
On the part that shows where it turns off Strabane, there is a wye….and would appear to link up to the subway.
I don’t know.
And for cobbelstone….I remember as a kid, I grew up at the corner of Hanna and Elsmere during the 80’s. There was some asphalt missing on Hanna and I remember seeing something.
I don’t know if it would be classified as cobbelstone, but it was like a concrete maybe with very large stones in it.
VERY similar to this, but the stones wern’t raised up so high….more flushed then that. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-31845247/stock-photo-cobblestone-street-pavement-texture.html
If you go to International Metropolis, March 4 2011 there is some reference to it. Saying riders would get off sometimes till the car crossed the bridge then get back on. Also the Windsor Star Photos from the Vault, go to page 29 then back to 27 and there are 4 pic’s including the one shown above + a ton of very interesting photos of Windsors past ,I like to go there on crappy days and look through their pictures.
The watermark across your images is a bummer. It seriously diminishes my enjoyment of this site. Its your baby and you can do what you want but to me its a step in the wrong direction, further evidence of the insidious creep and corruption of advertising. My two cents…….
Unfortunately the new watermark is due to a ton of image theft going on from this site, with images being re-posted without any links or credit. I have always been proud of this site having an unobtrusive watermark.
Last year a reader named Bob forwarded some very cool images he shot of Windsor in the 1970’s. Pictures of downtown Windsor, the salt mines and St. Mary’s Academy. Unfortunately those images were taken from this site and reposted on Facebook on a page called “500 Ways to know you’re from Windsor”. A vast majority of this site has been reposted on there.
Bob asked the person who posted it to remove it as he only gave permission for it to be posted on InternationalMetropolis.com. The people on the facebook site doing the reporsting, told him basically to get stuffed, and that it was none of his concern. He informed them he was the original photographer, so they cropped out the internationalmetropolis.com watermark and reposted the image again, mocking him.
As a result, he requested that his images be removed from this site, and I immediately complied. Now sadly there are some holes in this site.
Prior to this facebook group appearing there has never really been any problems that I know of, but the blatant disregard really turned me off.
Not to be a whiner, but I have put close to a decade in this site (and its predecessor) along with thousands of hours of my time, as well as thousands of dollars into acquiring and archiving the material on this site. So for someone to just rip it off and post it elsewhere and not give credit is a bit disheartening. While I do enjoy it, it’s really given me pause to consider why I continue to keep the site running. It’s a lot of work, with very little return.
wow thats a great old photo of the peabody bridge with the tracks going up and over boy it must have been grand to live back in those days with everything windsor had back then andrew it’s unfortunate that these things have happened but i think were very fortunate to have such a great nostalgic site to see how Windsor was in the good old days i for one applaud your efforts good show old man!
I understand Andrew…I was just goofin’. I have seen your pictures in other places as well though. I would ask them to take them down and gave them your IM e-mail as well. I wish I could remember where though.
Hope you keep it up Andrew…we need this stuff.
I’ve been visiting this website since its embryonic days as “Old Detroit dot com” (going back a bit more than ten years!) and agree with Andrew’s position 100%. What was going on at “500 Ways…” is something I was concerned about and could see things getting out of hand. Very sorry to hear how it was handled and the consequences which arose. There was also an incident a couple years ago where a local history website popped up and its ENTIRE photo gallery was unceremoniously lifted from International Metropolis. No please, no thank you. This sort of thing goes on a lot and is not respectful or courteous to the people who contribute their money, time, and items from their personal collections.
Andrew, please keep up the great work. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday wouldn’t be the same without these postings!
Thanks guys. I need to find a happy balance, where the watermark can’t be cropped out, but is less obtrusive.
Check out tomorrow’s image, and let me know if it’s any better….
This is a way to make the water mark appear only if the picture is copied from the site. Unfortunately I don’t know how.
Your work is appreciated, Andrew!
does it really matter about the water mark??
I don’t find the new watermark to be bothersome. The end of IM, on the other hand, would be devastating. Thanks for the crazy amount of time and money you put into this.
To clear up some things about the first street car in Canada was in fact here between Windsor and Walkerville along Sandwich St.(today Riverside Dr.), the trial run was May 24, 1886 with the official opening June 6, 1886. It was not that reliable and horses where used to pull the cars when they had problems.
The street car line that ran along Sandwich St. and over the Peabody bridge was the line to Ford City and on to Tecumseh. This line ran Sandwich St. to Strabane then east on Ottawa St. (today called Wyandotte St.) it ran on the north side of the road, later the tracks where moved to the center when the blvd. where installed, at Edward St. the tracks went to the left on an private ROW (today part is a pathway and part called Clairview)all away to Riverdale where it crossed Little River. At this point the tracks ran on the south side of the canal that was between Riverside Dr. and the tracks, then the tracks turned south at Lesperance Rd. on the west side of the ditch up to the CNR tracks where the cars looped around the station for the return ran to Windsor.
The tracks on Devonshire never came threw to Sandwich St., they only came as far as the PM train station on Devonshire from Wyandotte St.
As usual, Mr Drouillard knows his stuff. Maybe it is time to repeat the presentation of October, 2009 which was held at the art gallery.
I love having the Great Bernie Droilliard prove me right! lol
But I have a question for him. I always thought that the Devonshire line turned west on Assumption, then North on Victoria (Chilver), where it then linked up with the line on Riverside. When the Peabody bridge was modified/lengthened, the beginning of the grade went beyond Chilver and that portion was discontinued.
In this picture http://postmediawindsorstar.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/8015.peabody1.jpg
a little earlier then the one I posted before, where the bridge has been modified, isn’t that a track curving onto Chilver?
My map even indicates that there was one at one time, or was planned, because it’s drawn in broken lines.
Not so?
Thanks!
The Belt Line ran from the foot of Sandwich St. up Ouellette Ave east on Wyandotte St. north on Devonshire, west on Assumption, north on Victoria then west on Sanwich St.. Street cars ran in both directions on this line.
Street cars never ran along Wyandotte from Walker Rd. to Strabane even after the subways where open. There was a wye at Strabane and Ottawa St. so the Ford City cars could turn and head back to Windsor.