General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[ac3r]

That looks soooo much worse. I really hate this monochrome white/grey/black fad that's happening right now.

My exact thoughts. It was a gorgeous century old red brick building before. Now it looks like every other building in 2020: white, grey and black. Boring. Like...there's a reason why La Maison du fada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All of downtown is going to be sterile and white before 2030 lol.

Bring back modernism, please!

[tomh009]

While I'm no fan of the recent black-and-white trend, I don't think this building was a particularly beautiful jewel that we lost. It's a three-story mixed-use building dating back to maybe the 50s or so. Far less interesting than the storefronts that are about to get torn down on Queen St, on the other side of this block.

Here it is ... and, yes, they could have cleaned it up without painting it all white. But as it was, I don't think it was particularly attractive.

[cherrypark]

Greenwin is on a white paint terror spree across town right now. Has anyone been able to infer if this is a (misguided) branding exercise or some kind of attempt at improving energy efficiency?

[Spokes]

Agreed. Not nice at all

[Bytor]

Painting white also helps reduce the urban heat island effect.

[ac3r]

While I'm no fan of the recent black-and-white trend, I don't think this building was a particularly beautiful jewel that we lost. It's a three-story mixed-use building dating back to maybe the 50s or so. Far less interesting than the storefronts that are about to get torn down on Queen St, on the other side of this block.

Here it is ... and, yes, they could have cleaned it up without painting it all white. But as it was, I don't think it was particularly attractive.

A good power washing could have cleaned that brick up just as well too and kept the uniqueness of the building, even if it's not an architectural masterpiece. I do think they improved the ground floor façade at least. The old awnings were dated and the stiped wood looked pretty old as well. It's mostly the lack of colour that makes it look real dull now.

Had no idea it was only from the 50s either. I assumed it was older than that.

[tomh009]

1920s/1930s buildings generally have much more architectural details (see the Pearl Laundry, for example, or the Working Centre building). Given the brick colour and the bay windows, I think this is late 50s or early 60s. (Can't really judge based on the ground floor as I'm quite sure that's already been renovated at least once.)

[ac3r]

I looked it up on the old aerial photo cache the University of Waterloo has and the same building is there as far back as 1930.

It's actually not uncommon to find buildings built in the first quarter of the 20th century that lack ornamentation like this. The Bauhaus and similar modernist movements started out around the early 1900s and were rapidly taking over aesthetic and theoretical design ideas at the time. It wasn't until around the 1950s when modernism eventually triumphed over more classical design, so you do see a lot of buildings built between 1900 to 1949 that still had lots of details. But even by then, the design ideas of modernism - with a lack of what was perceived to be frivolous ornamentation - was quite common to see. The rear of Adolf Loos' Steiner House is a great example and this was built in 1910. Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer's das Fagus-Werk is another great example (probably one of the best) and this gorgeous factory was built between 1911 and 1913. The 20th century saw a huge cultural shift between classicism and modernism, which helped give rise to things like fascism as there was a huge conflict between the old world and the modern world. So it was a period with a lot of both as the world was rapidly changing thanks to the industrial revolution, mechanical reproduction and new ideas in philosophical and practical aesthetics. Hitler and others actually hated the Bauhaus movement! It was "degenerate art" to them, but thankfully persevered and won over nonsensical conservatism.

Anyway, here's the aerial photo below. The quality is terrible but unfortunately the University of Waterloo doesn't have higher resolutions available...they really need to rescan these old photographs. Here's another one from 1945 as well which has a better resolution. The yellow highlights what is now Charles Street for reference, as it's a bit hard to tell it's the same building in the photo from 1930. I'm making a complete guess but I'd say this building is from maybe 1928 or so and that the architect was inspired by early modernism (or they just didn't want to spend a lot of money on ornamentation, though that's more unlikely).

[tomh009]

Thanks for looking it up ... it doesn't look like the same shape of building, but the resolution is bad, as you said, so I may well be wrong on that.

[ac3r]

It's a bit hard to see in the screenshots. If you zoom in on the PDF versions here you can make it out a little better (the *.TIFF files might be higher resolution but I didn't check). I could be totally wrong though and it's just a similar building, but all I know of architecture has me believing it was already there by the 30s. Here's a link to the aerial photos...just click on the IM30 square in the centre to see aerial photos of downtown between 1930 to 1963: https://lib.uwaterloo.ca/locations/umd/project/KW.html

Anyway, yeah, I would have totally power washed this thing and had the areas around the windows refinished. Maybe add some colour on the ground floor for better highlights and some nice lighting. Woulda looked a lot more interesting than dipping the entire thing in a bucket of white paint haha.

[tomh009]

Yes. Imagine the current design, but with the original brick where it is white now, and white where it black now. It would have been better, I think.

But, still, not a major loss (less so than the upcoming demolition on Queen St) and it's still an improvement on what it was.

[Joedelay Highhoe]

You used to be able to look up property information (including dates) on the city of kitchener interactive mapping website, but I can't seem to find the property assessment layer. I would guess that it was built in the 20's. You can find similar red bricks along Joseph St. from the same era (check the house on the corner of Joseph and Francis).

[Chris]

A demolition notice has been placed on 44 Wilhelm. The tree has already been removed. This is one house in from Weber St.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/44+Wil...80.4968709

[jamincan]

That doesn't look like the traditional red brick characteristic of Southern Ontario, but I'm not sure when the more brown bricks started replacing it.

[Joedelay Highhoe]

Take your pick. I would wager that one of these houses used the same brick as the building on Ontario