Doors Open: The old and the new
FLASH FROM THE PAST
Today is Doors Open day in Waterloo Region.
The public can access many buildings and sites ordinarily off-limits. Usually, visitors enjoy catching glimpses of history preserved within and because of this year’s wide variety of structures available for snooping; the range of time-travel teasers varies from almost-zero to almost-complete. Today, Flash from the Past selects two 2017 educational buildings with enormously different stories.
The University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy at King West and Victoria was still just lines on a blueprint a decade ago but it stands on some of Kitchener’s most historic ground.
The public school in Ayr, which two weeks back welcomed students for the 127th time, is one of the oldest continuously-operating schools in Waterloo Region.
King and Victoria sits in Lot 16 of the German Company Tract. It was owned by Pennsylvanians Henry Weber and his son Benjamin from 1805 until 1819.
Another of Henry’s sons, Abraham, was one of those young Mennonites who trekked north in 1807 to put down roots here. He was 20 years old and farmed Lot 16 for 12 years before purchasing the land. His Conestoga wagon is not only a major attraction at Waterloo Region Museum but is one of the area’s oldest pioneer artifacts. It spent many years working on Weber’s farm around the future corner of King and Victoria.
The road running south from King Street past Abraham’s original home was part of the route that took later settlers to Wilmot Township — that explains why today’s Victoria South was known as Wilmot Street until the late 1930s. This was an important crossroads in embryonic Berlin.
Not long after Weber’s 1867 death, prominent barrister Ward H. Bowlby and his wife Lissie Hespeler bought the corner property and built a luxurious house on the 11-acre site.
Bow Hill was a landmark at that corner, even after the property became home to one of the large rubber manufacturing firms that gave Kitchener the nickname of “The Akron of Canada.”
Ames Holden McCready Limited built the plant in 1919 but by 1923 an American rubber giant, B.F. Goodrich, took over, enlarged the huge factory and began producing millions of tires until closing in the late 1980s.
Epton Industries then took over the old Goodrich plant for the next half dozen years. In next week’s Flash from the Past we will look more closely at this corner’s history — its Weber and Bowlby century, then its seven decades of rubber-making.
The architecturally-attractive factory was demolished 20 years ago and the land sat empty until the School of Pharmacy opened in 2009, one of the earliest additions/ transformations that have revolutionized downtown Kitchener over the past 10 years.
Ayr, on the other hand, has had little desire for revolutionary change.
The business core, with a few sign alterations, would look remarkably similar to old photos of the village. Step into the hotel and you might expect talk to centre on the upcoming 1920 hockey season or Henry Ford’s new Fordson tractors. Then you wander up to Hall Street and realize that 21stcentury Ayr children attend the same school their great-greatgrandparents did in the 1890s. Today, on Doors Open day, many current and past staff and students will be on-site, ready to share stories from Ayr school’s 127 years.
Virtually every 19th-century school had a tower with a bell to call students to class — few of those belfries remain and fewer still have a working bell. Ayr does … and its bell tower always causes a double-take because it sits at 90 degrees to the façade. Fortunately, unlike at many century-plus schools, subsequent additions at Ayr have not obscured the original architect’s work.
The oldest (and the newest!) Doors Open day is a unique opportunity to stretch the limits of Waterloo County Region education’s story.
Check out all the Doors Open sites at www.regionofwaterloo.ca/ doorsopen and click on the guide link.
Waterloo Historical Society meets Tuesday, Sept. 19 at Victoria Park pavilion, Kitchener. Guest speaker is Janice Harper: “At the Crossroads, Waterloo Hotel’s early days 1840-1890.” All are welcome, no admission charge. Doors open at 7 p.m.