Mary Allen Stories...

At the corner of Willow and Allen streets in Waterloo, across from the former St. Louis Catholic School (see blog post St. Louis Catholic School ) , sits an empty lot that has been mostly vacant for many decades.  Click to enlarge. The corner in question: Allen and Willow streets in 2012. Since the City of Waterloo recently bought the space, along with the school building itself, the corner has gotten a lot of attention in the  neighbourhood. Its future is an open question, but its past is a bit less of a mystery... Walking through this quiet intersection, looking at the empty corner, can your imagination conjure a looming, four-storey factory built right to the edge of the sidewalk and stretching far back along both streets?  Between 1903 and 1930, that’s exactly what occupied this lot. Prior to 1903, it was undeveloped: Click to enlarge. Part of a c.1895 birds-eye view of the town of Waterloo, looking NE, created by the Toronto Lithographing Co. Note the ope

The Grand Trunk Railway came to Berlin (Kitchener) in 1856, drawing the region within reach of the far-flung world, and broadening its cultural, commercial and industrial potential. In Waterloo, the land made available by the 1855 Hoffman survey (see the blog post  Mary Allen Beginnings, Part 1 ) meant that commercial and industrial enterprise could now gain a better foothold. The population increased to more than 1,200 by 1861, and would continue to grow steadily into the thousands during the late nineteenth century. Click to enlarge, then open image in new tab for full size. Part of Tremaine's Map of the County of Waterloo, Canada West, 1861. By the mid-1800s, Berlin and Waterloo were surrounded by subdivided farm lots. One undivided lot, “Saml. S Snider” (circled), shows the size of the original, nearly 450-acre lots as created in 1805. Streets shown include Erb (1), Albert (2) and King (3), as well as Mary and John in the future Mary-Allen neighbourhood (4). The black-

The future of St. Louis Catholic School, located at the corner of Willow Street and Allen Street, has been a topic of considerable discussion since the City of Waterloo moved to purchase the building from the Separate School Board in early 2012. As the first Catholic school in Waterloo, St. Louis is located on what was once referred to as the "Allen Street Sand Hill." At the time the hill was seen as having little to offer, and an early twentieth century historian mused: "One who looks at the site now can not realize what an unsightly hill it was, nor wonder that many would have preferred another place." (Spetz, 1916, p.181) The school, which opened in 1891, originally consisted of two rooms in the basement of the St. Louis Catholic Church. School lessons were taught to 70 children by the Sisters of Notre Dame, who commuted from Kitchener (Berlin) by train until a convent was built beside the church in 1895. In 1905, a separate four-room school building wa

In Waterloo Region, the story has often been told of how a group of Pennsylvania Mennonites bought a 60,000-acre tract on the Grand River that today contains much of the Kitchener-Waterloo urban footprint. In 1806 two of these Mennonites, Abraham and Magdalena Erb , came north to take up their land purchase: hundreds of acres that would eventually become the Waterloo city core.   Click to enlarge. Erb-Kumpf House , 2012. The oldest section is the back of the house, built c.1812 by Abraham and Magdalena Erb. Within ten years Abraham built a sawmill and gristmill on Beaver (Laurel) Creek, and the Erbs had established Waterloo's first settler homestead. Today, the former mill site lies along King Street , between the railway tracks and Erb Street, while the c.1812 Erb home still stands as the rear section of the landmark Erb-Kumpf House at King and George streets in the Mary-Allen neighbourhood. The original front of the house faced north, towards the mill.