Today’s picture is courtesy of John Stefani, who sends along this scan from his collection. A great shot of the ferry landing at the Foot of Ouellette Avenue. This card captures the changing of an era. There is a horse and buggy against the curb, and just to the right are a few cars. As John pointed out, possible built by Ford in Walkerville.
A detail shot showing some ladies in their Edwardian finest heading towards the ferry terminal.
Love it, love it, love it!!!!
Another thing I always think is great, is that everytime you see a steeple in Detroit in a shot from Windsor,
no matter how old the photo, you can look across and its still there. Except this time of course lol. I think that’s city hall or the
county building.
Great shot. Love the old downtown stuff!
i often think after looking at old photos like these what it must have been like to be alive back then a different time
Such a different era.
Incredible shots of those women. It would be great to see more street scene shots.
Fantastic photos! I can just about hear the horses neighing…the steamboat hooting and the mingle of excited voices boarding the boat…….not to mention the aromas of the day! Very lively!
And to think only a few years back we were walking on the same brick pavers as they did to the ferry dock. The next short street over to the east has the same brick pavers.
I can just imagine the outrage some people had felt for the automobile. Seeing the end of an era for the horse and buggy must of bothered some people.
Wow. A more simple time, great picture.
I love this picture. Thanks for posting. My great-grandfather owned the British-American Hotel at the time which would be just up and to the right of this pic on the corner of Ouellette and University. To think that he and my grandfather, who worked at the hotel and would have been around 17 or 18 at the time, were there living their lives just out of shot!
i recall the British American Hotel back in the 50’s i wasn’t vy old maybe 5or6 it seems to me i remember a barber shop in the same building what sticks out in my mind is the red,white and blue barber’s pole or was it the sign on the BA hard to remember LOL
Bonnie Ryan my last name used to be Beaudry until i was 11 WOW!! this is weird,my mother re married and now i have Trudel as a last name always regretted taking my adopted last name
At first I thought the white Detroit building in the background of the blown up picture was the Dime Building, but its window proportions didn’t look right.
Digging through period shots of the downtown, I believe it’s the Ford Building (constructed 1909), If the Dime Building (1912) or Penobscot Building Annex (1913) were constructed, they should be viewable in the photograph (and are not). However the darker body behind the Ford Building could indeed be the rising steel skeleton of the Dime Building under construction, which would date the photograph to 1911.
Bonnie, yes, the B-A hotel was on Ouellette, but not that far south at University (London St. at that time). It was at Riverside Drive East (Sandwich Street East at that time, too), just a few feet south of the docks.
I know — I used to drink 10-cent draught beer there as an under-age kid in the 1950s! (Naughty, naughty
In the seventies when they where trying to clear every thing on the river front from Walkers to the bridge, a developer tried to put up the Val Hala Inn on the site of the B-A Hotel on the corner of Oullette and Riverside Dr. East. This resulted in some large demonstations opposing the developmemt. That was stopped but the plywood palace snuck in, latter to burndown. (Viking revenge?) or good luck for Windsor.
Gary – what a coincidence! Where did you live in Windsor?? I grew up on Hwy 3 and my family home is now a wasteland for the new highway. I haven’t been back to Windsor for so long (I live in Burlington now) I forgot that the BA hotel was on Riverside Drive – not University! LOL Hope to get down there this summer
I thought the ferry landing was at the foot of ferry street? maybe i`m wrong.
If you consider the short distance between Ferry St. and Oullette Av. the whole area was probably reffered to as the ferry landing.
Domenic, I believe there was a ferry landing there at one time when Windsor was founded (circa 1850s and prior). But the ferry dock you see above was there as early as the 1880s.