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Riverside Drive – c. 1910

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.

Andrew

View Comments

  • I read somewhere, that"old Walkerville" had the first steretcars in North America! Could this be varified??

  • 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.

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