A neat view of Ouellette Avenue looking north towards Wyandotte street, from about the mid 1960’s.
This corner is my favourite part of the card. The Johnson & McWhinnie designed Bank of Montreal Building, that was sadly reclad in the mid 1990’s, but beyond that, I love the wall of neon signs. It looks then, like a much bigger city than it is today.
‘The future’ sure isn’t very progressive in this city.
Imagine what it will look like in 40 more years downtown?
Not one historic building, all lowrise bars and abandoned shops.
No neon lighting, no one story bank on the left hand corner, and much more has changed, Yes, I am only the mire age of 19 but I can still see the differences in the picture from what I see on a weekly basis downtown.
I agree with Shawn M. Just imagine what will happen in the next 40+ years of this what use to be a beautiful downtown core.
were never going to have the downtown we had in the 50’s and 60’s empty store fronts were very few and far between the block of ouellette between park and university had a fruit market a side walk shoe shine stand wilkonsins ,Kanners all kinds of cool stores i wish you younger people could have walked thru Kressges what a store!! real atmosphere
i love how wide the streets were back then
That is the Windsor I remember! Even after Ford Motor Co. left Windsor and destroyed so many families Windsor was still a great place to live for most of us. Sure we moved West but Windsor still has a place in my heart and deserves a better future than the slow contraction and growing despair that seems to be the case now and has been for a long time. I pray things will turn around for The Rose City in The Sun Parlour of Canada.
It WAS a “much bigger city than it is today”, in terms of the denser population within the old city boundaries and the concentration of commercial activity downtown. Sure, Ford moved its assembly operations to Oakville in the early fifties but it continued to be a significant provider of jobs for decades thereafter. Ironically the auto industry jobs that nurtured yesterday’s city also helped to kill it, or rather, transform it into today’s city, with a less dense population sprawling across many square miles and commercial activity spread out in scattered strips and clusters accessible only by automobile.
Add to the mix, the development of new materials, the application of mass production techniques to building design and construction, the economic imperatives of doing it all as quickly and cheaply as possible, (who gives a damn how it looks or how long it lasts) and you end up with “junk” cities for a “junk” culture obsessed with consuming more “junk”.
Conceivably, there could be another rich and vibrant community down there. The proximity of the river is a natural and powerful attractant. You’d need to start with creative, visionary planning. Decide what kind of structures you want and how you want them to look (stucco need not apply) You’d have to significantly increase the population density, develop quality housing, provide services to meet people’s needs “in loco”, attract new “soft” industries that pay a decent wage. Give the casino the boot…….
Or, you could make the casino the centerpiece of an international “Funtown”. Level the whole area around it (already well on the way as far as I can see on this blog). Some paving here, landscaping there, trees, benches, fountains, roller coaster? giant ferris wheel? maybe even a three quarter size replica of the old downtown, based on old fifties and sixties postcards?
Whatever happened to the canal proposal that I read about here a few years back?
Venice of the Great Lakes?
Canal vision was dead before it was started.
Gary, I’m tired of people saying it won’t be like it was in the 1950s and 1960s. No one then thought the downtown would be what it is today so why can’t it be that way again? Shouldn’t that be the goal of the DWBIA and City Hall?
Many other cities have done it so why can’t we do it? We throw inthe towel too easily these days.
I do agree with the wider roads downtown. I wish we had more on street parking, that’s for sure…and why not free parking Saturdays?
Dave i believe we could have a city like we had years ago the only problem we have is we have city politians that have no vision and back bone and a mayor who only seems to be building his legacy and a total lack of concern for history the city seems to be killing windsor by genocide any thing left from the early days is knocked down and replaced with stucco covered boxs the newest stucco attraction is the ex million dollar saloon on chatham street
Am I the only one who thinks the streetscape today look better than it did back then? What is so ‘beautiful’ in that photo? Look at it – there are no trees or flowers, there are ugly overhead wires, the buildings are ugly, and the signs are eyesores for the most part.
It seems like most people here think anything from the past is automatically considered great and anything from the current day is automatically considered bad.
Rob there’s nothing wrong with todays street scaping i think there’s too much of it look at the photos above the sidewalks are nice and clear these days there’s too many flower pots trees in those big planters too much sidewalk space is being taken over by patio barricades the sidewalks in the photos have the big city look
The buildings were much nicer back then Rob. We had more styles of architecture, larger buildings and more of them. This creates density and a closeness you don’t get with today’s vacant lot downtown.
Sure the streetscaping is better today but the buildings we have downtown are an outright sin.
Gary, good points except for the patios. We need more of them not less.
I remember this corner really well. My father had a restaurant on Wyandotte St. E., right across the street from the TD Bank. Been looking for a picture but no luck.
I left Windsor in June 1969 and have lived in Ottawa most of the time since. I remember how pleasant downtown Windsor was in the 1960’s. Much of it had to do with the fact that there was an active commercial life on Ouellette Ave. and that there were buildings with character. I agree with many other commenters here that much of that has been destroyed by the careless destruction of historic buildings and the spread of unattractive, unappealing strip malls across the city. I disagree that densification is the answer. That just produces more congestion. What other cities have found works is the establishment of an attractive area near downtown that has attractive places for people to congregate, walk and visit fascinating pubs, restaurants and shops. Winnipeg has such a site at the Forks, Ottawa has the Byward Market and even awful Toronto has the the Kensington Market. Th charm can come from historic buildings but, as Windsor has destroyed those, the charm would have to come from fountains, squares, and other pedestrian-friendly places where people would like to go. An essential element is adequate parking and safety (i.e. adequate policing). Cities that declare war on cars and focus just public transit just don’t get it. I remember Windsor very fondly. In thirty years, it could have a vibrant downtown again.
I’m 45 years old and I’m old enough to remember a booming downtown full of construction cranes and lots of foot traffic. Then Free Trade, NAFTA, the GST, the newly-elected NDP provincial government cancelling the former Liberal government’s plans to move the ministry of Labour to Windsor, and John Milson quitting the mayor’s office after only one term and you have the makings of the downtown Windsor we know today. Milson was the best mayor Windsor ever had and I’m 100% positive that downtown would be in a lot better shape had he stayed on as mayor,
Quite a strech to call a one term mayor the best we ever had, he probably saw the handwriting on the wall and did’t want to get blamed for.
The buildings on the East corner of Oullette and Wyandotte don’t appear in the photos. I understand that the building that occupied that corner in 1921 was St. Ureula. Does anyone know what this establishment was? Was it another nunnery?
Bob, I’m not sure what you mean. The northeast corner has the old TD Bank and the southeast corner is not visible. But I’m not aware of anything being on the southeast corner before the Douglas Building.
http://internationalmetropolis.com/2011/05/27/33-wyandotte-street-east-1948/