Dexter D’E. Potter bought and sold land from his Queen Street office
In the 1850s he and his family, from Nova Scotia, settled in the Niagara Peninsula
Our old photo this week dates back to 1892 and shows the insurance and real estate office belonging to Dexter D’E. Potter.
The office was on the west side of Queen Street, above St. Paul Street, near May Alley. Presumably one of the men standing there in the doorway was Potter himself. He would have been 45 years old at the time the photo was taken.
Potter was born in 1847 in Nova Scotia. Late in the 1850s his family settled in the Niagara Peninsula, probably motivated in part by the fact that an in-law was by then successfully established in Niagara.
That was Dexter D’Everardo, who had come from Nova Scotia in 1834 and soon gained prominence here, holding one important position after another in the government of this region during his long career.
It was Dexter Potter’s good luck that D’Everardo took a shine to the young man, financed a good education for him in New York state, and afterwards took him into his household in Pelham and found him employment as clerk in the local Surrogate Court. This effectively launched young Potter’s successful career in Niagara.
Moving to St. Catharines, he got into the real estate business in the early 1870s, buying and developing parcels of land near his St. Catharines home on Niagara Street above Welland Avenue, and in Grantham Township.
By 1884 Potter was selling real estate and insurance from this office on Queen Street, and there he remained until 1896-97, when he suddenly closed up shop and disappeared from the business scene in St. Catharines.
Still living here, he moved the focus of his business activities to Buffalo for the next two decades. For a couple of years he was active there as an officer in the Great Granite Gold Mining & Development Co. of Ontario. Subsequently he was a real estate agent and broker headquartered in downtown Buffalo for a decade and a half.
By 1901 Potter had left St. Catharines to reside in Buffalo.
It doesn’t seem that he ever again lived or worked in St. Catharines.
During the final decade or so of his life, he seems to have come back across the border and may have settled in Niagara Falls. In 1942, at the age of 95, he died in hospital in Hamilton and is buried in Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines.
And what about the Queen Street building that housed his office circa 1884-97? After Potter moved on, that building housed a series of other real estate and insurance agents.
Ultimately, the row of buildings in which his office had been located was purchased by the Royal Bank, whose local branch was adjacent to them, on the northwest corner of St. Paul and Queen.
In March 1968 the bank demolished the bank branch and adjacent buildings and built a modern building in their place, which opened for business in February 1969.
That building, shown in our “Today” photograph, is now occupied by the Quartek Group design firm.