One of the more interesting facades along Ouellette Ave, belongs to the building now occupied by the Mandarin House at 331 Ouellette.
The building was home to Red Robin Ladies Apparel in the 1950’s and I think prior to that it was home to the Good Housekeeping store.
Anyone out there with any memories of the place? Or what was there before the Mandarin House?
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if i remember right, upwards of 12-13 years go it was vacant for a long long time…at least it looked that way. i think that’s the spot where a local guitarist named Tim used to play in the doorway. he’d just sit on the ground under the awning which was a maroon colour at the time i think, and sing and play his guitar.
other than that, i’ve got nothing. looks like you can still see the marks from the frame of the red robin sign.
what’s that plaque there on the right? is it important ?
thanks for the post Andrew!
I was in the restaurant not too long ago, and had to use the restroom. The restrooms are located in the basement and oddly they’re at the end of a long hallway with vacant business offices down there. I think the door on the left leads directly to a set of stairs going down.
I remember the Red Robin. My Mom always shopped there. The basement level was also a shopping floor in the store back then. Oddly enough, there was a Coke dispensing machine down there up against the wall along side the goods for sale – 7 cents. By the time we got to Red Robin, I was really looking forward to that Coke.
Can that be the original facade of the building? It seems to me to be a cover-up from the 50s.
I remember Red Robin though it wasn’t one of my mother’s favourites. remember the vasement but not the Coke machine (but we’d never have bought any).
I thought Red Robin had a split front with display windows on either side of a central “kiosk” sort of display. If I’m remembering the right store, it would have been two of today’s stores wide at least and been subdivided sometime since.
Maybe Terry can tell me if it was the Red Robin that had that layout in front? The postcard looks like a single window but it’s not showing up on my screen at all now for some reason so I can’t examine it. Did they have a second floor as well?
Some of the old stores had second floor display windows as well. They’ve all been renovated and the windows covered up or changed when they were used for offices. Things have changed so much that I have trouble remembering which stores were which sometimes and I shopped downtown into the seventies I Business Girl and another like it I’ve just forgotten the name of) when I worked at Ouellette and wyandotte.
Of course it wouldn’t have anything to do with my aging brain!
Yes! The pic finally loaded and – on closer observation – I can see the split window as I remembered it!
OK, what was the name of the shoestore to the south? You can see part of the name on the sign above the word “shoes” but I can’t quite make it out.
Clare, perhaps it was Wilkinson Shoes.
When I was a kid Good Housekeeping Shop was in the building next to the new T.D. Bank. Another building that has a nice urban feel to it.
Anyone recognize the car. Looks like a GM product, 55-57?
Single headlights. Maybe a Studebaker product, VP?
In the early 1950`s Red Robins` had an xray machine used to determine the proper fit of kids shoes .I remember standing in front of a rectangular boxy structure while my mother discussed the fit of a pair of “Buster Browns” for me… imagine that !!! Years later , when I was 16 I worked there in the childrens` department parttime for 50 cents an hour . I also worked for Ponds Drug store (the same year) at the corner of Wyandotte & Ouellette …also for 50 cents an hour !!! Those were the days when a student could have several parttime jobs at a time !!!
Love this site !!!
Caroel Anne
If you enlarge the picture it could be a Packard, the hood ornamemt looks like theirs. I think they where still built into the late fifties.
I remeber the Red robin store but don’t recall the good house keeping store i think wilkinsons was next door to the north i knowmy mom shopped at red robins and i think i was the owner of a couple pairs of buster brown shoes with the picture of the kid with the sailor suit red hat and dog in the heal of each shoe whoa!!! thats a long time ago
According to my mother, my grandmother worked at Red Robin in the late 1940’s to the beginning of the 1950’s.
I think the original top part of the Red Robin building has been removed, compare the pics of the original and the Mandarin House pic. I need to go in there, the Mandarin House, if it’s still open, just to see if it has the same ‘atmosphere feel’ to it as Chanosos and the Loose Goose buildings. Not much left of the old Windsor from the ’30’s -’60’s
Jay Thompson Ricard, I’m not sure what top part, you’re referring to. They added a window, but other than that, it seems to be identical.