Don’t tear down city’s history

Re: Old playing card plant could be rebuilt into lightfilled school, architect says, by Brian Cross, Nov. 17. After reading the article about the transformation of the Mercer Street International Playing Card building into a school, the thought came to mind that perhaps a slow motion renaissance is happening in this burg.

Is the destruction of our city’s history stopping? What has been saved? The Walkerville Town Hall and Crown Inn on Devonshire Road, The Walker Power building repurposed. John Campbell School saved. The Armouries building and the facade of the Windsor Star building resurrected by the university, The YMCA building on Pelissier, Our Lady of the Rosary church turned into Water’s Edge Event Centre, for a few.

But we’ve lost so much over time: The Norwich Block, St. Mary’s Academy, the Flat Iron Building in Walkerville, the Viscount Motor hotel, that great mansion on Victoria Avenue, Walker farms, the CPR passenger station off Tecumseh Road. What about Tecumseh Road Boulevard that stretched all the way to Pillette Road. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful sight today? Progress can be disastrous when short-sighted.

Personally, the dismantling of the Peabody Bridge was sorrowful. If you accelerated at the right speed going up it, you could get airborne for a microsecond. Probably why the frame rail on my SR5 disintegrated.

I miss talking to people like Bill Bielecki, now passed, who knew the Ottawa/Parent neighbourhood history, and for instance, whose front lawn might collapse because of abandoned bootlegger caches.

Will Assumption Church be saved? What’s going to happen to Lowe Tech?

Don’t let them tear down any more of our history, and listen to the folks who remember it.

Stan Galinski, Windsor