Norton Palmer Hotel

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• Working there was like being part of a family. Even the 'big guys' knew your name.
  I was the switchboard operator in 1970. Mr Norton was an impressive man.
  The lobby's chandelier was absolutely enormous. If I recall, it hung down 3 floors.
  I may be wrong but didn't it end up collecting dust at the Devonshire movie theatre lobby? And the lead crystal cut glass doors to the bar, didn't they go to a restaurant downtown called The Coach & Horses?
  What a shame.
  Thank you for reminding others that great historic businesses/buildings like this once existed.

• We purchased some of the doors from the Norton Palmer Hotel. You could still see the outline of the room number on the doors. Very narrow doors. If you ever stay at the CP /Fairmont hotel like the Banff Springs or the Empress in Victoria you will get the feel for the door sizes. Very narrow compared to the size of the door openings in today's hotels.

• I don't remember the Norton Palmer, but I do remember the demolition of the Adelman's department store, the old Windsor Opera House and the Beanery to make way for the Travel Lodge and the 75 Riverside East condominiums. The Mayor and City Council of the day viewed old and empty buildings like the Prince Edward, Norton Palmer and Adelman's as an embarrassment and a sign of the city's economic stagnation. Everybody wanted downtown Windsor to become more like downtown Toronto and that meant newer and bigger buildings. I even remember Alan Halberstadt calling Mackenzie Hall a white elephant and a waste of taxpayers' money in his influential Windsor Star column. Imagine if we had listened to him back in the day and allowed Mackenzie Hall to fall victim to the wreckers' ball!

• I am glad that Alan Halberstadt has changed his views on older buildings. He now understands the importance of them unlike most Windsorites.

  As for the Travel Lodge they are still a bane in downtown. Not only for the 2 parking lots on prime real estate; not including the ugly architecture of tehe building itself; but they still try and push their damn "tourist" buses into residential areas!

• I wouldn't be surprised if the developers who built Victoria Park Place promised the City a lot more than they delivered in order to get approval to build it.

• Back in the 80s I knew the developers of Victoria Park Place. The condo project was the Canderel Building of its day. It was supposed to be a bona fide skyscraper that would take Windsor into a new era of downtown construction. It was to be the beacon project, rising up some 50+ (if I remember correctly) stories. The project was conceived during the devastating recession of the early 80s, when Windsor pretty much hit rock bottom economically. Anyone who was around back then will remember how bad it was. The Norton Palmer was destroyed on the promise of a massive skyscraper condo that would bring new life and wealth into downtown. What ended up being built was a guillotined 30ish story nothing. Its construction quality was so poor that I remember watching someone casually lean against his living room wall and nearly end up on the bedroom floor on the other side. When he felt the give under his shoulder he jumped back, then made a show of pumping his hand against the wall so we could all see it buckle.

  Here's a little look back in time: in the 40s my grandmother was a night shift cleaning woman at the Norton Palmer. When she had surgery to remove a tumor she was considered delinquent from her job and subsequently fired. It took her a year to recuperate, during which she could not work. This meant no income and two children to feed. Few people know this, but if Ukrainians applied for Relief, the precursor to Welfare, they and their entire family were deported back to Ukraine. People of Ukrainian descent were held in suspicion because of the country's inclusion in the Soviet Union and their part in the Winnipeg General Strike among other things, namely the union movement. Since my grandfather abandoned the family just after the War, my 14 year old uncle had to quit school after grade 8 and go to work so the family didn't starve. Some 50 years later he retired as a top executive at GM.

  Fatherless? Uneducated? Poor? Sounds like a modern day recipe for prison, prostitution, and gangs rather than a gold watch and a sweet Big 3 pension plan.

  P.S.: in the neighbourhood where they lived there were many similar families who ran blind pigs and bordellos, not because they were scum but because they had no other means to survive in a place where they were second and even third class citizens. Their kids grew up to be upstanding despite such a marginal upbringing.

  Go figure.

• Amy, this is a slow response, sorry. You are right that some stained glass was salvaged but it did not go to the Coach and Horses. Move over to the 100 block of Ouellette, west side, to find its final destination. In the 1980s the glass was installed in a basement restaurant below Fast Eddy's. I can't remember the name.
  Another artifact saved was the long wooden bar in the lobby tavern, known as the Horseshoe when it closed but certainly an offspring of the English Pub you can see in the photo. The bar was transported to the student pub at the University of Windsor. Not the current pub so I assume the bar was eventually reduced to toothpicks in some subsequent university reno.
  The hotel catered to commercial travellers -- salesmen -- who might dine in the cafeteria. The elevator was controlled by a uniformed operator.
  Pres Norton also ran a small, private bar called the Pres Club. As a cub reporter I landed at the hotel for a couple of nights at the start of the job and was excited at having the local press club as a neighbour. I didn't notice the spelling, and the place was only open to Norton and his cronies.

• I worked as a switchboard operator while I was going to school. Older employees really took care of our well being while working there. I worked the night shift and they had a table set up beside the switchboard so we could do our homework.
  When the first man walked on the moon they had a TV set up so we could watch it while we were working also.
  Mr. Norton senior was a sweetheart, pleasant to everyone & lived on the tenth floor.
  After his son took over he was also very nice to us but when the fire codes changed and they had to upgrade them to standards it would have cost a fortune so they decided to sell the building.

• I remember in the 50's the Lions Club held their meetings at the hotel. I would follow my Dad into the tavern and see that bar. Wow! it it was so long it seemed neverending to me. I think of it everytime I hear the NP name. Ray

• I remember in the 50's the Lions Club held their meetings at the hotel. I would follow my Dad into the tavern and see that bar. Wow! it it was so long it seemed neverending to me. I think of it everytime I hear the NP name.