During the pre-depression days when the bridge was nearing completion, there were many different companies purchasing land and sub-dividing it, expecting to strike gold. However as the stock market crashed, these properties remained vacant, and along the way only a handful of these house were actually built.
The Great Lakes Land Co. Inc, based in Detroit was one of the larger land owners.
A view of some of the model homes that were built.
The one in the top left, is still around, standing at the corner of California and Algonquin.
The areas marked in red were lands owned by the corporation.
Many of the neighbourhoods were never built in. Following WWII, with a shortage of housing for retuning soldiers, the government got involved, and helped assemble these large tracts of land. Many time the properties were sold, but had never been built. Once the land had been reclaimed, many areas gave over vast areas of Victory Housing.
A view from Google maps below, shows how most the area above was never built.
Many of the streets laid out on this map, some that were never built at the time, are appearing today as new subdivisions, like this one highlighted in LaSalle. Often times, the streets legally exist and parcels are already divided, even though nearly 80 years has past.
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Interesting stuff!
That’s a great map. Very detailed. Who published it?
I’m interested to see that the main road from the bridge was already called “Huron Super-Highway” in the first image, prior to development of the area.
Had a friend who lived in the second floor of that house. It was a huge apartment but cost a fortune to heat.
Interesting. The streets, when highlighted show some names I never noticed before.
This is a fascinating part of Windsor’s history. I’ve often wondered about the story of that house on California.
great post Andrew
Why hasn’t this land been built on? With all of the subdivisions that have popped up over the past several decades, you’d think that some developer would see this as an opportunity. I had heard some years ago, that the lots were still individually owned, making it difficult for a developer to assemble the area into one sub-dividable unit. But that didn’t seem to make sense — after all, all of the individual owners of unoccupied land weren’t likely to continue paying taxes on land that they weren’t using.
Mg – I think the reason this land sits empty is because the area is sprawling outside of the borders of Windsor, since this area is well within city limits it isn’t as desirable as the suburbs.
I recall city planning officials 40 years ago saying the land is next to impossible to assemble, because as MG says above, it is mostly small lots with individual owners, whose contact information has been lost as the years went by. The city can’t use the powers of expropriation to acquire land for private use such as commercial or residential development. As for seizing the land for unpaid taxes there’s the problem of how to serve notice since the records are out of date and whether the legal costs to overcome the hurdles are worth it. Since each lot is only 40 feet wide or so, there would be hundreds of lots to deal with. The city could put a bundle of taxpayers dollars in to assemble the land, only to have some long-lost heir show up and sue for a golden buyout. The way it is now, the much of the land is an environment-friendly woodlot which doesn`t cost the city to maintain.
Cool post Andrew!
Those maps are great.
Darn it, i just sold that house at 1590 california
All of those unused street names. Have any shown up in other areas of Windsor, I wonder.
And what is with that Huron Super-Highway? How come they didn’t actually build a super highway there until now when they have to rip through so much of what already developed? Isn’t that a no-brainer? You have one of the most important border crossings and there’s a 3 lane road with tons of stop lights. That makes as much sense as a Wookie living on Endor with a bunch of Ewoks! But seriously, imagine the headaches it could have avoided now. And it could have been in a much better situation decades ago. We’re dealing with it now, because we waited so long.