A glimpse down King Street in the 1860s
In December 2022, this series featured a late 1860s photograph looking east along King Street from the clock tower of the old courthouse, at the corner of King and James streets downtown.
Today, we’re back in the old courthouse tower again, this time looking westward. Sorry about the vertical line through the middle of our “today” photo— that’s one strand of the wire screening placed over all the windows in the clock tower, to keep pigeons away from the clock tower’s bell, which was right behind the photographer.
In the old photo, we see a dirtcovered street receding off into the distance. The photo must have been taken very early in the morning — King Street is quite empty, except for one horse and wagon at the corner of Hellewell’s Lane and a couple of pedestrians in the block between Queen and William streets.
The buildings we can see there are for the most part two-storey residences, with a couple of taller commercial blocks on the right (north) side of the street.
The huge presence in the distance on the left is the four-storey Welland House hotel, then just perhaps 10 years old. It has an interesting profile, with a tall tower overlooking Ontario Street, and a series of small structures around the perimeter of the roof. Were those chimneys serving wood stoves or fire places in every room?
At the end of King Street, there was one element in the photo we’re still familiar with today, a fine residence, built sometime in the mid-1850s for D. Curtis Haines, a local businessperson who also served as the U. S. consul here in St. Catharines. Why a U.S. consular officer in St. Catharines? Presumably because the Welland Canal, part of an international waterway that still passed through the centre of this city, was used by ships containing American citizens and American property with issues that sometimes had to be resolved.
Not surprisingly, the view from the courthouse tower today, some 150 years later, has changed a lot. There is not much from the 1860s scene that we can still recognize today.
At the end of King Street, the Haines residence still stands. Since 1924, it has been the home of the St. Catharines Club.
Nearer to the viewer, on the right, the red brick commercial building with parapet roof and twin chimneys at both ends still stands there, overlooking the Market Square. Old-timers may recall that building as the one which, back in the 1960s or 1970s, had on its east wall a huge, eye-catching billboard for Silverwoods Dairies, notable for the two cow heads that emerged from it, looking down on the Market Square.
The Welland House hotel? We all remember the July 2021 fire that consumed it.
Otherwise, much of the scene visible in our 1860s photo is blocked — on the left by the Corbloc commercial complex, opened in 1974, and on the right by the Bell Telephone building, built in 1967.
Not surprisingly, the view from the courthouse tower today, some 150 years later, has changed a lot