Thanks to Urbanrat for the reminder that this house had become demolition number 1, for 2010.
I looked high and low, but couldn’t come up with a photo of the place. Google streetview saves the day…
The closest thing I had was this photo from 2003. You can see the corner of the house to the left of the Medical Arts Building.
I don’t have much info about the house, I would guess it was built around the 1895-1905 era. The 1923 City Directory lists it as the residence of Philip J. Harvey. Harvey was the president of P. Harvey & Co., Limited. They are listed in the directory as “Butchers, Bakers, Fish Dealers, Grocers. Catering our specialty.”
P. Harvey & Co. Limited were located in the middle unit of the building located to the right of Dufferin St. in the photo above (3rd building right of the building under construction) from Scott Hughes’ postcard from a December post.
While I hate to see our built heritage disappear, I’m hoping good news will follow this demolition… The house is wedged between the Medical Arts Building, and Windsor’s newest scourge the ever present “Lodging House”.
Word on the street has it that the house was purchased by the owner of the Medical Arts Building. He purchased the Medical Arts building a few years ago with plans for a conversion into Condo Units. Maybe the demolition of this site, points towards the start of that project getting off the ground. Personally I’d trade that house to see the Medical Arts put back to use.
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I agree with your sentiments Andrew. Hopefully it is to save the Medical Arts Building. The house was in very good shape and theowner was looking to lease/own the building just over a year ago.
Hopefully some of it was saved (lead glass transom, some features on the interior were still original).
Is it feasible to have such homes moved to other more appropriate locations? Perhaps with some sort of government incentive to do so.
Back in the 80’s it use to have tanning salon upstairs… It’s been renovated inside that house….i hate when people renovate old homes !!!!!!!! well what i mean is….renovate them way to modern, and it looks fake ! Ps… That was my first and last time tanning at a salon…lol love the real sun !! I will email this pic to my sister see if she has any info on this place….
The medical arts building is beautiful. If the demolition of this house helps save the future of the medical arts building, then I think it is worth it.
Growing up, our doctors were in the Medical Arts Building. I was very happy to hear that someone was going to renovate it into condos…but lack of parking was a concern since the former parking lot for the building had been built on by the Health Unit. I used to love the elevator with an operator to bring you to your requested floor.
What a lovely, symmetrical little house. How typical that it is to be be demolished. That part of Ouellette used to be very smart. What happened to all the nice folks who lived there? Did they all move to Tecumseh??? 🙂
The Medical Arts building should be restored to its original grandeur – my ophthalmologist was in that building in the late 1950’s. How many years has it been vacant?? Just my opinion, I would rather see the house restored and used for either retail or another use applicable to the neighbourhood – whatever that may be. Thanks for posting.
I just “DISCOVERED” this website today. – one word WOW ! I will be a regular visitor, for sure. A couple of questions . . . . How does one get access to old versions of the city directory (eg. circa 1923)? Also, how can you embed pictures from google street view? I’ll be watching for responses and help on these two questions. Thanx!
Paul, you can access old city directories at the Windsor Public Library, main branch. You’ll have to ask the librarian to get them out for you though. I don’t think they are on the publicly accessible shelves.
Thank you for the info John Stefani – much appreciated.
thanks for the post Andrew! I too agree with you about tearing this one down.
M.O.M. – i’ve seen bigger places than that get moved on TV. as i’m sure you know, even here in Windsor they moved the old walkerville post office..was it?…..onto devonshire. it’s comperable in size, if ot a bit bigger. doesn’t matter if it’s around the corner or 20kms away, it can be done if you’ve got money.
Paul, thanks for the comments, and welcome to the site. The directories are at the main library on Ouellette. On the second floor, they have all the city directories going back to the 1890’s on microfilm. Stop in at the reference desk on the second floor, and someone will show you how to use it if you never have before. The back wall also has some printed copies, but these are mostly “modern” ones, say mid 1950’s through today…
If you’re looking for anything older than 1937, start with the 1937 directory and look up your address. It will give you the old and new addresses. (The city was renumbered in 1937). Then move back to 1923… There was also a second renumbering around 1920, or so.
As for embedding, it doesn’t seem to be able to happen just from the comments, I can only do it from the administration side of things.
Also, about the directories, there are some odds and ends of directories scanned and available at Ancestry.com, a service which library card holders (with online access) can get at for free. Login as usual, select ‘databases’ and go from there.
Around 2001 till 2008ish it was occupied by a family lawyer Gibson. I’ve been in that place during that time and it was stunning, needed some work done, but the woodwork was beautiful.
http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/story.html?id=6b7e3768-64e0-4327-b4b1-52278894ff4b
I just saw they cleaned up the bronze and glass canopy and installed the new south facing windows…curious when they are going to be ramping up interest for this project…I really hoped for a “Broderick Tower” sort of media blitz.
“Redekopp hopes to complete the redevelopment within a year.”
It’s 2013, and it’s still not done.