[flar]

Cool thread. Compared to the urban renewal that took place in Toronto downtown Hamilton looks like it was taken behind the woodshed and beaten to a pulp in the 1960s.

I remember seeing a photo from the 1950s of the street that York Boulevard replaced. It was a narrow commercial road with a vibrant streetscape that looked kind of like Dundas street or College. Somehow the city fathers managed to demolish the entire length of the street and replace it with a 6-lane highway. They also demolished their historic city hall and, to build their new city hall, took about 6 square blocks of Victorian mansions and razed them to the ground.

All true, I estimate that about 80% of the buildings in Hamilton's core that existed pre-1950 are gone. The sad thing is Hamilton doesn't have much in the way of postwar architecture to be proud of.

The old York St:

Now:

 

[Hipster Duck]

Other buildings:

City Hall

Court house

Court House in the context of Prince's Square:

Post Office and Custom House:

And where it stood:

Hamilton Market Place:

Piggott Bldg and long lost neighbours

James St., looking north

an earlier postcard

Looking south

The incline railways would have been a cool little tourist attraction today:

Hamilton Terminal Station, King & Catharine Sts.

 

[Tewder]

I almost can't bear to look at these pictures.

 

[flar]

While most of the other atrocities had no excuse, this one (Central Collegiate) burned down:

The replacement:

 

[DC83]

York Blvd

Baby-Boomer Mentality: If We Ignore It, It Will Go Away.

When it came to seedy stretches of Roadways in Hamilton, local politicians had no clue how to fix the problem without wiping the whole area out (essentially pushing those seedy characters to other parts of Downtown).

York Blvd, and King St West just South of York, were infamous streets known for Drugs, Prostitutes and just plain seediness.
There's a reason there's a joke in Hamilton where one would say "Your [insert family member here] Works at King & James!!" implying that they're a prostitute.
If you look at King & James today, there is not only no Prostitutes hanging around, there's way too much street-pressence for a Hooker to run a successful business.
So this 'King & James' stigma stems from way back when Downtown was a Downtown and not a Suburban Model Town.

 

[Hipster Duck]

^That's a good point DC83. Right now I'm fascinated with urban renewal, and I enjoy (perversely) studying "worst case" examples like St. Louis or Manchester or, to a degree, Hamilton: cities with vibrant neighbourhoods that were almost wholly destroyed by the wrecking ball in the 1950s. I often wonder what went through the mind of a city planner. I used to think of them as these sort of Wernher von Braun types who divorced the human component from their research and looked at cities and city life so clinically. Evicting people by the tens of thousands to ram a new traffic artery through, and other things like that.

In reality it was probably completely different. The postwar downtown with its dingy flophouses and gritty Victorian streetscapes was probably not a sight to behold for the people of the time. It was probably easy to overlook those Victorian treasures because they were a dime a dozen in every city across the continent. When we look at these pictures we feel a twinge of disgust because we know the potential these solid blocks have, but in reality the potential these buildings possess is partly due to their rarity - that rarity caused by extensive urban renewal and clearance in the 1950s and 1960s. It makes me wonder whether our aesthetic preferences (at least in architecture) are more governed by what's rare (ie: good) and what's common (ie: bad) rather than by some more subjective judgment about what constitutes good design.

 

[DC83]

^^ True enough, Hipster.
I would love to have a conversation with an old-time urban planner from the 50s-60s and see how their minds worked.
Of course everything had to be designed around the Automobile as they were becomming more and more popular/affordable during this era as well.

I'm sure there are countless factors that come into play, 'Victorian Rot' being one of them.


From the same street, Market St looking East towards James St N
Note: Zellers & Graftons retail shops. James Street used to be the main shopping street (Eatons, Zellers, Graftons, Robinsons, Birks).

THEN:

NOW:

Was hard to get a shot as there's no way to get as far back as the 'THEN' photographer since Market St no longer exists and is actually just a blank wall for the former Eaton's Centre.

 

[flar]

Some more long demolished buildings in Hamilton, the last two are different photos of ones Hipster Duck posted above:

Birks Building

Now:

Loew's Theatre

Now ??

Old Post Office

Now:

Terminal Station

Now (I think? Though no longer a Ramada, and that mural has been removed)

 

[Uncle Teddy]

What a disaster York Blvd turned into.

 

[flar]

What a disaster York Blvd turned into.

It really boggles my mind as to how anyone could have thought that was a good idea.

 

[OLM]

Some more long demolished buildings in Hamilton, the last two are different photos of ones Hipster Duck posted above:


Terminal Station

What theatre is that visible behind Terminal Station?

 

[DavidJamesTO]

At least the post office was replaced by something decent that's still standing.

 

[oreoshack]

looking at these photos, i can tell that in the early 20th century it really was a toss-up between hamilton and toronto about who would become the "mega"city in the region?

guess we know who won out eventually

 

[Edward Skira]

I doubt it. Hamilton had manufacturing, Toronto had manufacturing, finance, government and more.

 

[flar]

Toronto was 4 times the size of Hamilton at the turn of the 20th century. Hamilton was dominated by industry from the start, but was also the last Canadian city other than Montreal or Toronto to be home to the headquarters of a national bank, The Bank of Hamilton. Neighbourhoods like Durand are testament to a once wealthy and prosperous city. Hamilton has really been in decline for many decades. Toronto, as the major centre of government, finance and education for English Canada was already choking off Hamilton back then. That economic diversity has kept Toronto prosperous in the post industrial world, while Hamilton was always doomed to failure.

Population of Canadian cities (1901)

1. Montreal.......267 730
2. Toronto.......208 040
3. Quebec..........68 840
4. Hamilton........52 634
5. Winnipeg.......42 340