Last week I had a photo of the Bruce Baptist Church demolition from 1949. I came across another photo of the area from 1929. Looking east toward Bruce Avenue. The church on the left is the Bruce Baptist Church we saw last week.
Courtesy of Google Streetview here’s the same view today.
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Looks like Streetview just made your blog a whole lot easier to assemble! I imagine you’ll have more requests now that people are looking closer at the city online. I wasted several hours tonight doing just that. These before and after shots make my day, thanks!
yeah, I’ve already found a bunch of cool places and forwarded them to Andrew lol.
but wow…what have we done to this city? I’m glad we got a look at that church.
Thanks for the post Andrew!
What’s the tall building far down the street on the left in the 1929 photo?
Nice cracks in the asphalt, especially by the Tim Hortons curb. How many decades does the city wait before repaving roads in this city?
Dave, do we really need such smooth roads to drive on? Wouldn’t our tax dollars be better spent on improving our quality of life in this city? Roads are made to be driven on. So what if they are a little bumpy. There is so much more that our tax dollars could go towards than damn roads.
(By the way, you can still see the street car tracks under the asphalt if you look carefully)
What makes me feel sad is the amount of parking lots in the area instead of the density and design of what once was.
The building on the north east corner of Bruce and University Ave (London St) is now home to the Rose Garden which the upper half is now clad in aluminum siding and the bottom in that god awful 1970s chip stone.
Andrew, how about the corner of Janette and University or more of the interior of the city centre west lands (what a stupid name).
Thanks for finding these lost pictures. They are truly gems!
JB: That’s the Canada Trust Building. It was immediately west of the Security Building on the north side of London St., now University Ave. Variations of both buildings exist and are very much in use today. CKLW Radio had its studios in the Canada Trust building. CBE Radio, where I worked for many years, was right next door. We could look out the windows (9th and 10th floors) and wave at each other…..friendly competitors.
Dave, that is nothing. If you want to see Third World take a drive up Tourangeau north of Tecumseh. Make sure all the bolts are tightened first!
The Canada Trust Buildng is just obscured by the hotel (Quality/Embassy suites???) that is just to the west of it now. It’s still there.
amazing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i heard along long time ago nuns were on that corner when i was a small child and always knew about it and you know what to see the picture it is incredible!!!!!!!!!!! thanks again Andrew!
The Canada Trust Building was called The Metropolitan at the time of its construction…
The “Then” picture is what I would vote for. Can you bring it back?
As I recall, the same view in the late 1970s (about the time I bailed out of a fading metropolis) was remarkably similar to the 1929 view. There was a beer parlor masquerading as a veterans club (Canadian Legion?) on the SE corner (beer and stale smoke smell every time I walked by). Pre-chinese greasy spoon (different names over the years – maybe Sofos around this time?)on the NE corner. Service Market also on the north side of University next to the restaurant (They always had a funky bicycle out front with a small front wheel and huge basket for local deliveries – imagine that!). Bethel Pentecostal with its neon “Jesus Saves” cross dominating the northwest corner, and the old commercial block on the SW corner. Can’t remember what was in that block. Maybe a drugstore (Ponds? Rexall?) in the corner unit. When did that block go down?
A cataclysm in the last thirty years.
Windsor to me now looks like one of those emaciated survivors of the Nazi death camps.
Windsor-in-exile, and it has been treated as such by elected officials, apathetic administration and by it’s own citizens.