This building at Tecumseh Rd and Moy, has a long history as a restaurant, as I recently discovered.
As I was looking through an old booklet from 1954, I came across this ad for the Bel-Air Restaurant…
Someone along the way bricked in every other window along the side, but it’s still a restaurant. According to some of the long time business owners along that stretch of Tecumseh, the Bel-Air closed sometime in the 1970’s.
In the sixties the interior was exactly the same as what your photo depicts. Kennedy Collegiate students used to go there after school to get a milk shake, soda or a burger. Other places they used to hang out in were the “Derby” and the “Canusa”. Back then the Canusa was a diner as well.
This is a good example why commercial building owners should think hard before they make drastic changes to a perfectly good structure. This was a busy and successful diner before the new owners came along and closed it all up and converted it in to a dark and dismal tomb that no one has wanted to eat inside.
Yeah. And why not just use curtains if you want it dark — cheaper and not permanent.
M.O.M. the Derby on Howard? I think there’s a photo of that one too in the booklet…
He might have meant the Derby BBQ at 301 Tecumseh Rd East which is now Spy’s (corner of McDougall)
Sorry it is off topic but, another one bites the dust. With the new engineering building staying on campus “The school will have to tear down the former Princess of Wales elementary school and another building.” (from todays Windsor Star)
Isn’t there any architectual/heritage value in that building? It’s like the UW’s automatically exempt when it comes to any opposition in demolishing heritage buildings. Sheeez.
The closed up restaurant windows are the result of Ontario liquor licensing laws. One regulation was alcoholic beverages are not to be visible from the street. When stand-alone restaurants got the right to serve a beer with meals in the 60s (I think) , owners were faced with the dilemma of staying as a family operation, or boarding up and getting a liquor licence. Economics forced the choice but it is the “blue” tradition oif Ontario that turned many of Windsor’s older dining establishments into caves.
That doesn’t completely add up. Why couldn’t they use window coverings to comply, as Shawn already pointed out? And if the law required literally bricking in the windows, why would they just brick in some of the west windows and not the rest?
Ontario didn’t have a province-wide building code until 1975. Before that In Windsor your neighborhood restaurant would be regulated by the local municipality and the local health unit. (Dr. John Howie was a tough SOB and served Windsor well). Except for liquor establishments which were provincially regulated since 1927 by the Liquor Control Board, a department with enforcement powers that paralled the powers of the OPP. Essentially the LCBO/LLBO licensing regulations were a provincial building code well before there was one.
Why didn’t drapes do? You’ll have to talk to a lquor inspector or a bar owner who recalls the enforcement back then.
I would talk to a liquor inspector or bar owner but I thought that’s what you were here for? 😉
My great grandfather was a liquor inspector for “District One” Appointed by the “Ontario Liquor Hotel Authority Board” in 1944. Too bad he wasn’t still around 🙂
I asked Kathryn Wagner out for coffee at the Bel-Air after Evensong at St Barnabas Church in early December 1964. We are still happily together and married since 1967. Thanks Bel-Air!
Doug Skoyles and Kathryn Wagner: two names from the past. Do hope this site sends out updates to those who made comments. A fine hello to the two of you!
I lived on Moy just down from the Bel-Air and attended John Campbell and KCI and went to church at St. Barnabas. That was a full fifty years ago!
Cheers!
After the Big Boy at Tec. & Elrose, the Bel-Air was the place to hang out. If we got too rowdy, Alex would come out of the kitchen, stand there with a meat claver in his hand and not say a word. I took my wife there minutes after I gave her a ring and we had a slice of the best Boston cream pie. The banana cream was pretty good too.
Does anyone know anything about 414 Tecumseh Road East? Was it ever a restaurant in the 1940s?
I have a personal interest as a relative lived at that address in 1946 and mentioned in a letter that he had opened a restaurant, but not sure whether it was there or elsewhere in the city.