Seven properties recognized with heritage awards
Owners honoured for long-term stewardship or successful renovation
What do a local brewery, three former churches and a post office have in common?
They are among seven Windsor properties that will receive 2017 Built Heritage Awards while another four properties receiving heritage designation in 2016 will receive heritage plaques at an upcoming city council meeting after the city’s Planning, Heritage and Economic Development gave the green light Monday.
“These seven properties are being recognized for good heritage stewardship,” said the city’s heritage planner John Calhoun before the committee unanimously approved his recommendation.
The 11 properties will be recognized at an upcoming city council meeting, Calhoun said, most likely April 10.
The Built Heritage Awards are presented to owners for reasons such as a long-term good property stewardship or a well-done recent rehabilitation. The properties must be in Windsor but do not have to have heritage designation.
The seven properties receiving awards are the Walkerville Brewery at 525 Argyle Rd.; the Windsor Light Music Theatre at 2491 Joe St. Louis Ave.; a house that was originally St. Aidan’s Anglican Church at 834 Lawrence Rd.; the Marentette Apartments at 15631589 Ontario St.; the former Gordon H. Fuller Windsor Utilities Substation at 1504 Pelissier St., which has been converted into office space; the Water’s Edge Reception Centre, formerly Our Lady of the Rosary Church, at 2879 Riverside Dr. E. and Post Café, the former Sandwich post office at 3201 Sandwich St.
The Walkerville Brewery, which was formerly a Hiram Walker warehouse, was built in 1928 and is “a rectangular brick box, the equivalent of four storeys tall, with contrasting black banding on the street-facing sides,” Calhoun writes in his report.
The Windsor Light Music Theatre, which operates out of the former Victoria United Church, was built in 1951 and is not on the heritage register.
The house that was St. Aidan’s Anglican Church is also not on the register and was built in 1924, housing several churches until 2012 when contractor Anthony Nehme converted it into a single family home.
“This property demonstrates the possibilities for adaptive reuse of historic buildings,” Calhoun writes.
The Marentette Apartments, which went on the heritage register in 2011, were built in 1927 and “includes patterned brickwork below window sills, arched stairway windows, and cast-stone details such as wide parapet bands, shields a band below the first-floor windows, and urns atop the parapet,” Calhoun writes.
The Gordon H. Fuller Substation was built in 1959 and was put on the heritage register in 2010.
“The front section has masonry walls of differing height stone and large enamel panels, with aluminum frame windows,” Calhoun writes.
The owners of the Water’s Edge Reception Centre, Dana and Larry Horwitz, “have transformed this landmark 1907-13 church, which was closed in 2007, into a gathering place available for events,” Calhoun writes. A new roof was installed in 2016 and many other repairs done.
The Post Café building, which received heritage designation in 1988, was built in 1906 and new owner Luna Wang and partners “have renovated the first floor with a modern interior, recognizing its history, to become a neighbourhood coffee and tea shop,” Calhoun writes.
The four receiving heritage plaques for their 2016 heritage designation are the Bell-Coulter house at 793 Devonshire Rd., the Ambery-Isaacs House, a.k.a. Foxley, at 811 Devonshire Rd., the Wiser’s Reception Centre at 2072 Riverside Dr. E. and the Harris House at 1380 Ypres Ave.
These seven properties are being recognized for good heritage stewardship.