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Ouellette Avenue – 1965

Happy Friday the 13th! Today’s old photo is dated March 23, 1965 and bears a Detroit Free Press stamp on the back.

The caption reads:

    Windsor Mayor John Wheelton is beaming
    these days as he looks over his bustling town.
    There is $25 million worth of building going on …
    things like a 500-car parking ramp, for a Downtown
    urban renewal project, being started inthe top pic- (caption cuts off)

Here’s Ouellette, north of Wyandotte, on the west side of the street. Look at how packed it was.

Here’s the east side.

What a booming place.

Have a good weekend everyone, see you back here Monday.

Andrew

View Comments

  • The right half of the pic obviously appeared in the article. See the red marker lines splitting the picture? The blurring of the picture around the mayor's head highlighted his profile, while the drawn in areas and lines visible in the 3rd picture show either outlining or differentiation between the subjects in the photo. That's what I meant by doctored. Anyone have any input these observations?

  • The process of printing a photograph in the newspaper at the time resulted in low resolution pictures. The photo had to be engraved unto a metal plate by reshooting it through a screen to break the image into dots. The engraved metal plate was then placed in a frame encasing the metal type consisting of the story text. An impression was made of the page and it was used as a mould to cast the final curved lead plate which was bolted onto the press. Needless to say a lot of fine detail was lost in the procedure and more disappeared as the plate wore down with the thousands of impressions in the actual printing. Pictures were touched up in the pre-press procedure. White washes were used to highlight areas such as the edge of shoulders of the pedestrians in the background. Also a black ink would reinforce fine lines that might disappear. Go into a newspaper library and you’ll find plenty of strange pictures of fine-looking women with blackened lips, little Grouch Marx like eyebrows and white-washed ears.
    Another factor in the Wheelton picture is the photogapher obviously submitted a landscape shot of Ouellete Avenue but the editor who planned the page used the shot as a head and shoulders. The vertical red cropping mark cut the pic in half, including a pedestrian. More whitewash was used to remove the distracting half-body parts and other troublesome details. The cutline indicates there was a second picture, unseen here, which probably made up for the lost street details. While you could say the pic was “doctored”, the news photographer probably said his or her work was “butchered” and today we would say it was “photoshopped. “

  • the parking garage beside Steinberg's was the City market on Saturdays on the first floor. There was also a parking garage on Pellissier street between Park and Chatham I think or maybe it was Pellissier and Wyandotte.

  • What a great opportunity for a constructive discussion about downtown. I, too, remember spending entire Saturdays in downtown Windsor. Music Lessons with the Sisters on Ouellette, a stop by the Carnegie Library, sewing lessons at the Singer store. Maybe my friends and I would walk down to Smiths or Bartlets, with a stop at the Scotch Wool Shoppe. We would eat at Lyttles Tea Room. Later I liked a place called The Calico Cat which was in the Norfolk Building. There were daytime things to do. Perhaps having students downtown will develop that market.
    On the subject of parking---I find the garages, both Chatham St and Pellissier convenient but appallingly filthy and neglected. I can't imagine what someone from out of town would think about parking and riding in the elevator, or walking down the nasty stairs. Those buildings need to be power washed if you think people will park there more than once.

  • I kinda remember that the old city market was in the block that the present police station is. Steinbergs-Miracle Mart was where the the courthouse is I think.The parking building is between Pitt and Chatham,on Goyeau st.

  • gary, I'm not sure why they did away with it, but with Patios, it won't be back any time soon.

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