The Wauds of Queen Street
The Waud family was an important element on Queen Street in St. Catharines for almost a century.
The section of Queen Street north of Lake seems to have opened for development in the late 1860s. A report in a local newspaper in April 1869 reported on the development going on there at that time, and noted that Godfrey Addison Waud was then constructing three homes in this developing neighbourhood.
About the same time Waud would build a house there for his own family, at 80 Queen St., on the east side of the street three doors north of Lake. Our old photo this week shows what it looked like — three storeys tall, of wood frame construction, with a verandah stretching across the front of the structure, fairly plain in style except for some embellishment below the eaves of the gable that marked the centre of the building’s roof line.
By this time Waud was well advanced in his career as a builder. He and two brothers came to this country from Yorkshire circa 1828. He settled in St. Catharines and in 1830 married wife Abagail and settled into life here. He established his own sawmill and workshop on Lake Street, and by the mid-1850s a local chronicler ranked Waud among “our principal carpenters, joiners and house-builders.” His signal contribution to local architecture was surely the construction of the church and steeple of St. George’s Anglican Church.
By the early 1870s Waud had died. Afterwards his widow and their six children — five daughters and one son, Joseph Addison Waud — remained in the Queen Street house. Joseph and his wife had just one son, Godfrey Addison Waud, named after his grandfather, but in giving birth to him Joseph’s wife died. Afterwards, Joseph and his mother Abagail (died 1890) and his unmarried sisters continued to live there at 80 Queen St.. He continued in the carpentry business until he retired in 1924.
When he died in 1931 ownership of the family home passed to his son Godfrey, but in 1939 he died as well, leaving his widow Carla and their unmarried son Frankland to live alone in the old house. In 1946 the aging building was remodelled, notably having its large verandah replaced by a simple little entrance portico.
The end of the Waud presence on Queen Street came after Godfrey’s widow died in 1957. The old house was far too large for Frankland to occupy all by himself, so he and his siblings decided to sell the old family homestead. By 1960 Frankland had moved elsewhere and the house remained vacant for the next few years.
By 1966 it had been replaced there by the six unit apartment building shown in our “today” photo. The building was originally called the Slamp Apartments, named after its owner. A half-century later, now no longer bearing the Slamp name, the building remains at 80 Queen St., opposite Montebello Park.