They don’t build them like this anymore
Victorian mansion was the home of Frederick W. Wilson
When this week’s old photo was taken, the ornate Victorian mansion it depicts was the home of Frederick W. Wilson, a prominent businessman.
It was on Church Street, just west of the junction with King Street, near the eastern edge of downtown St. Catharines. The address today would be 137 Church St.
The grand old mansion is believed to have been built in the late 1880s. It’s not known for sure whether Wilson or someone else was its first owner and resident, but Wilson occupied it no later than 1898.
Wilson was the son of George Wilson, a prominent manufacturer of lumber and building materials and also a building contractor who had been a major player in local construction work since he arrived in St. Catharines from Armagh, Ireland, in 1863. At least one notable building constructed by the elder Wilson still stands today — the distinctive old Broadway Market (today Pony Mini Mart), corner of St. Paul and Academy streets.
In the 1890s, Frederick Wilson was in partnership with his father in the George Wilson & Son Planing Mill and Box Factory, at the corner of Wiley and Nelson streets. In 1900 a fire burned them out of that location, whereupon the Wilsons re-established their business on a 3.2-hectare site southeast of the intersection of Niagara Street and Welland Avenue.
Following that fire and relocation, father and son continued to be deeply involved in residential and business construction — in 1900 their firm was said to be “among the largest builders and contractors in the Niagara Peninsula.”
By 1907 young Wilson had become president and general manager of the firm, then called George Wilson Building and Contracting Co. Ltd.
A few years later, in 1912 while still heading up the planing mill and contracting company, Wilson established St. Catharines Improvement Co. Ltd., which became an important force in the development of the Glen Ridge neighbourhood during the period just before the First World War and into the 1920s.
Frederick W. Wilson died in 1939; his wife had died in the previous year. Their former Church Street home was occupied by a stepdaughter, Annie Coy, until 1943, after which time it became a rental property, divided into apartments and office space. The most notable, longest lasting of the renters was the IODE (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire), which had its local headquarters there from 1944 until 1952.
In the following year, Wilson’s former home was taken over by the St. Catharines Separate School Board and was occupied by St. Joseph’s High School for Girls. The school remained until 1960, when it closed and its students were integrated into the new Denis Morris High School.
After the departure of the high school, the former Wilson mansion remained empty until it was demolished in 1963. Since 1970, Camelot Towers, a 12-storey apartment building, has occupied the site.