Looking North From The Norton Palmer Hotel – 1938

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• i had this as a desktop for a long time. someone kept taking pictures from here seemingly every decade. i have one that has the fisher buildig (?) upper floors under construction, then this one, and another with a cruise ship and a freighter, maybe in the 40's or 50's.
  i used to love walking thu the alley of the Norwich block...very new yorkie. i wish i had taken more notice of that block in my youth. the more i think about that grand staircae in fast eddies the more i wonder what details were hidden inside that i over looked on a suger high with quarters to burn.
  this is the first time i noticed that there's a building where the put-put golf was though. i assumed there wasn't a building there since the turn of the century!
  .....does that say "golf school" on the second floor of the book store? lol and ya i'm pretty sure that was the book store Andrew, but i don't remember the name either.
  the roof top just sneaking into view, bottom left of the first pic is the Loop, on the right the Paul Martin building shoulders in, and the Star on the left.......everything else is wiped away :(
  what an awesome downtown we had. i can't write anything else to say what a shame it is to loose those.

  Thanks for the post Andrew!

• oh....and there's two ferries docked there, and i'm fairly certain that they're Ste Claire and Columbia. They were moored here frequently back then. in the first shot you can see the stack and stern poking out from what i think was the crawford hotel.

• I would bet the gas station is a Supertest, they had the distinctive roofs like that. There is still one in London on Richmond that has been converted to a convenience store. The bookstore was South Shore Books, Sheila Wisdom ran it for long time.

• Would the building on the bottom left hand corner of the 4th picture be the Windsor Star building?
  I remember the little shops in the basement of the White Building in the Norwich Block (I think it was the White Building). You went down the stairs at the back and there was a lingerie store and a restaurant called "The Cheshire Cat" circa 1977.
  On Pitt St W in the Norwich Block, I think there was South Shore Books (Martin Deck may have managed it??) and Tom's Restaurant...beautiful long oak bar. There was also a office supply place and Hardcastle Music Store (they moved from Pitt St E. Again my memories are circa 1977 or so.

• Yes, you can see the Star building on the far left. Interesting to note that our downtown was much larger then than it is today and yet we have at least twice the population.

  A lot of buildings on those photos are gone and only the city of Windsor is to blame.

• AARON - was the grand staircase in fast eddies in the back???...i was too little too remember details but after i read your blog i got a faint memory of running up and down those stairs....thanks for reminder....weren't they painted bright red??...or am i crazy....

• WHAT WAS FAST EDDIES ORGINALLY....WHY SUCH A BEAUTIFUL STAIRCASE AT THE BACK OF THE BUILDING??

• According to the 1938 directory the gas station at the corner of Pitt West & Ferry is Hodgson & Dunlop

• There used to be a lot of that style gas station around Ontario. There best known was on Lakeshore Blvd for years upto almost the 80's beside the old Tip Top Tailors building in Toronto. I always wondered with the price of real estate down there how it lasted for so long.

• ROBBIE - yeah it was in the back. when you walked in you would go straight, pass the coin guy into another room of sorts. there on the right you would find that red motorcycle game where you had to make it lean to go around curves but was utterly impossible to move as a kid.....we'll for me even into my teens lol. to your left would be the staircase...i don't think it was painted red but i'm remembering some really worn red carpet on the stairs. it went up to a landing where you could look down into a sky light that belonged to a vacant irish pub i think....or maybe an unused back room to that pub. i don't know why i'm remembering always being freked out by some old man sized dressed up mouse. those real freaky animated things from the 70's you used to find at like an old school chucky cheese or something. anyways, from this landing it hung a short left to the second floor. that's where afterburner and air hockey was.
  but as far as what it was originally....i don't know. i have a picture of the Essex Fusiliers (essex kent) marching infront of the block and there's a model t in the background and it looks like a 4 door which i think came out in 1915, so lets just say the picture is from that year. there's a sign hanging out front of fast eddies that says "tailor". i doubt a tailor would have such an important staircase, but from the set up i would say it was some kind of saloon/hotel thing.