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The Security Building – 1927

Another Friday, another old photo… Today features a old press photo from the fall of 1927.

The caption on the back indicates the building cost $1 million, and was set to open December 1st.

As is often the case however, some of the details in the photo are more interesting…

I love the 1927 style scaffolding… According to the paper in the windows, the glass was supplied by Windsor based Hobbs Plate Glass.

This corner is taken somewhere around where Aardvark’s/Lefty’s is located today… Note the old Victorian porch, and the old stop sign. Interesting to note the back wall of Meretsky & Gitlin Furniture…


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Even today, traces of the painted sign still exist…

Andrew

View Comments

  • A very classy looking building, have the bricks darkened over the years or is it just the tint of old photIo that makes it look lighter in 1927.

    It looks like a third floor was added to the Meretsky + Gitlin (Beer Market) buidling at some later point.

  • Matt - The date I had for the expansion was 1927, if that's accurate then the expansion started shortly after this picture was taken:

    http://internationalmetropolis.com/?p=2246

    Brick is a porous material, so I'm sure it has darkened over the years.. a few years ago Immaculate Conception was cleaned and it was a night and day difference...

  • Brick will darken with age from pollution. Especially from back when coal was used in every building for heating.
    The same can be said for the Apartment building on Giles W and Dougall Ave.

    I like these old photos that show old houses in the downtown area. It is interesting to see that these houses sat next to various businesses. In many cases today you can still see houses behind the changed facades in many areas of Pelissier and even throughout the downtown area (Andrew has done one on Jason's strip joint).

  • Nice pics, a very clean looking building.

    Still, no post for the river boat shelter being demolished on the riverfront? Or Hallmark Tools? A structure collapse is unusual for Windsor also. ;-)

  • The garage collapse was covered by our friends at http://windsorite.ca - so sense covering what they've already covered... Now if it was a building... ;)

    As for the demo's, just you wait until Monday...

  • For several decades in the mid-20th Century the top floors of the Security Building sheltered CBC's radio operations, including Radio-Canada. The studios moved to Riverside Drive West some time in the late 1970s or early '80s after CBC took over the television station from private owners.

    This post and the connecting post on the Kennedy Building recall that neighbouring structure as a furniture store. At some point the second floor was used as a car dealership, either Studebaker or Packard. A freight elevator facing Pelissier hauled the cars up. That elevator endured for years after the building was converted into a bar/restaurant but was finally closed up, not too much before the ground floor became the Beer Market.

    Fiddlers, which I think was the first bar, was operated by the lawyer Frank Montello. One of Leo Dufour's early comedy clubs took over the basement where, one weekend, a very young and very rubber-limbed comic from Toronto emoted in musical imitation of such then-stars as Kansas. Yes, it was Jim Carrey.

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