Today’s image comes from the Southwestern Ontario Image Archive, at the Univeristy of Windsor, another one of Windsor’s little known local history resources.
The image above of the Ever-Ready Dress Stay factory,is found on page 18, of the booklet: “Souvenir : Windsor and Walkerville, May, 1895 : Official Programme of Grand Military Demonstration, May 24th, 25th, and 26th, 1895. Published: Windsor, Ontario : E. J. Baxter, 1895.”, which is housed in the collection of the Leddy Library.
The building sat on the south west corner of Glengarry and Chatham Streets, and was listed as Vacant as of September 1937…
.. The site today is home to the massive Casino parking garage. I wish I could remember back to the pre-casino days, but I suspect that this may have been standing until Casino expropriation came along. Does anyone remember this place?
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Can’t remember anything about this place Andrew…sorry!
BUT, thanks for that link!
I remember this site.
North of Chatham Street at Riverside and Glengarry was a coffee making plant (Colonial? I forget). That neighborhood always smelled of roasted coffee beans.
Moving South from Riverside on Glengary, was a few houses, one of which I hung out at as a kid. Then At the corner of Glengary and Chatham was a Bar (Violent bar at that..really nasty place be near at night) the name of the bar slips my mind.
I don’t recall ever seeing the Ever ready dress building. This is going back to 1988.
Now I remember!
The Bar was called the “Drake Tavern” It was an old building that used to be I think Angelo’s Hotel.
Like I said, it was a very dark, brooding, scary kind of place.
If you look closely on the Sanborn map you can see a business called “Windsor Wiping Cloth” on Mercer which is still in operation on Edna Street the last I heard.
Also, thank you for the source Andrew. I loved the postcards with correspondence on them the best. My favorite was from a guy who sent someone a post card that had a great shot of a brand new Landspeary Park and Prince Edward (my alma mater :P) on it. On the back he wrote a small note asking someone named Charlie to go have his car washed.
Was this a common practice at the time – sending post cards that contained small requests like that?
I used to have the occasional beer at the Drake in the early 70’s. I don’t recall it ever being sinister, violent, or dark. The neighborhood may have given that impression or it may have changed later. At that time it was a somewhat seedy but quiet neighborhood watering hole in a run-down part of town. This area was run down in 1952, when my parents and me arrived from Italy and took up residence nearby. The customers were mostly bleary-eyed locals dragging on Export A’s and gazing bewildered into their Labatt’s 50, finding temporary solace from life’s cruelties or just wanting to get a buzz on. For recreation there was a shuffleboard but I don’t remember a jukebox. These were the pre-“TV on every wall” days when people actually went to these places to get high and talk to each other. Imagine that!
I believe that the “Ever-Ready Dress Stay Company” building across the street became the home of “Silverwood Dairy”. This company was known for using horse drawn delivery wagons into the late ’50s. They had stables nearby, on what is now University Ave. but was then London St.(I think). It seems to me that this would make a great research subject. Stables in downtown Windsor in the 50s!I would be interested to know when the last horse was withdrawn from service. In the 60s, Silverwood went god-knows-where and the building, or at least part of it, became an auto repair shop. There was a distinct sign jutting out from the northeast corner of the building, at a 45 degree angle to the intersection, “Johnny’s Spring Service.” All these buildings were intact when I left in 1976. When I discovered, on one of my frequent returns home, that they had been demolished, I headed to the Dominion House and got drunk.
By the late 1970’s the Drake was in a decline. I think they rented rooms and it became a place where “nice people” would not dare to go. I think I recall that there was a murder there in the 1980’s (I could be wrong) and also a fire.
Yes, there was a murder there. It did become a haven for nefarious activities. Mostly drug related.
i do think it was the drake hotel. cheap beer, cheap pool. i just had that coffee smell i remember on my walks to the old windsor market! thanks!
If I am not correct that building later became the popshop you can buy pop there. But it too was in decline and eventually left vacant. And the Drake tavern was right across the street. And on the other side of the road used to have a few home’s there that had enough for few families to live in. I remember this area very well as it was my old stumping ground and infact I don’t live far from these area’s still to this day. As I was born on Alymer ave.
I lived in this area until the casino came along.The Drake tavern was the neighbourhood bar,it was a rough bar. Anyone have pictures of the Drake or the neighbourhood.
Not too far from that building also was the fish place and damn did it stink when you went around there lol. But there was a little back alley that also went through the back of them building’s that were on that corner.
But yes the Drake was on the opposite corner. And was one of the rough bar’s back than. And there was another bar close by that was on Pitt steeet down by the market area but more closer too where the old st vincent de paul was .