A historical glance down St. Paul Street
This week we take a look down St. Paul Street, St. Catharines’ main street, as it looked about the time of The First World War, 1914 to 1918.
Immediately to our right, at the corner of St. Paul and Garden Park, we see the sign for Tim & Mac’s Billiard-Bowling parlour, a fondly remembered leisure centre for decades during the last century.
Parked in front of Tim & Mac’s we see a horse-drawn wagon, one last vestige of the age of the horse.
Further down the street, on the right, at the corner of St. Paul and James, the tall building was the headquarters of Bank of Nova Scotia. The very impressive building, four storeys tall with a glazed terra cotta, neo-classical façade, was built in 1907 and stood on that corner until the mid-1960s. A modern red brick Scotiabank occupies that same corner today,
In the distance, as far as we can see down St. Paul, where it curves to the left at Helliwells Lane, we see a huge commercial building that still stands today. Built in the 1860s, for most of the 20th century it was occupied by Bissonnette and Case, clothier. Many would also remember one of the building’s longtime tenants — the legendary Diana Sweets restaurant.
An eye-catching building on the left side of the street is marked by three tall adornments — pinnacles — atop its two-storey façade. That building housed the old St. Catharines Journal. St. Catharines’ first newspaper, founded in 1826, it was a serious competitor to The Standard until it had to declare bankruptcy in 1920. The old building still stands today, though now shorn of its fancy roof-line ornamentation. It’s the building whose ground floor now has the Subway sub shop as a tenant.
Closer to us on the left, at the bottom of James Street, stands a solid building, two storeys tall, its façade marked by four classical columns. It was built in 1912 for the Sterling Bank (later Standard Bank of Canada). It has not housed a bank for many decades now. During my time in St. Catharines I’ve known it as a jewelry store, later as the home of Coffee Culture. Its current tenant is the Green Apple Coffee House.
Immediately to our left, the building with the large arched entrance was the Griffin’s Family Theatre, one of two St. Paul Street theatres that then bore the Griffin name. That building long ago vanished from the scene. Today that same site is occupied by the northwest corner of FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.
One more detail to note — coming toward us down the centre of St. Paul Street we see the track of the old Niagara, St. Catharines & Toronto (N.S.&T.) street railway.
But note also the rail spur that heads off to the left from the main line. It led over to the N.S.&T.’s main downtown terminal, which then stood next to the Griffin theatre right where today we find the main entrance to the performing arts centre.