  Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
For the last while, I've been meaning to post some pictures here of my second favorite city, naimly my hometown, St. Thomas. In so many different ways, I'd say we're a shrunken Detroit clone. We're up to our necks in history that no one seems to care about, we're both being strangled by unceasing sprawl, we both saw our prime just after the turn of the century, and we both have a BIG self-image problem. We still have our city hall, though, so I believe that puts us one up on you.  | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
Here we go...  the file was too big the first time around and I had to shrink it. | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
Now I gather I have to dissappear. I'll post my tour tomorow. | ||
jjaba (198.81.17.34 - 198.81.17.34) |
Big beautiful Romanesque Revival City Hall from about 1870-80? jjaba | ||
the rock (67.217.249.237 - 67.217.249.237) |
What about a pix of your famous statue "Jumbo the Elephant" which I thought was located near the Pioneer Museum? | ||
SCB (204.39.228.84 - 204.39.228.84) |
Beautiful pic Benjamin.. | ||
ErikT.O. (64.228.108.2 - 64.228.108.2) |
Yeah, nice... I didn't think St Thomas was a hurting town, though... ever been to downtown Kitchener (topless pot bellied dudes wearing sweat pants & faded jailhouse tats, interspersed by cops on foot, bike or in a car)? Parts of Hamilton looked pretty rough last time I was there a couple of years ago (I used to go there semi-regularly), but it still feels like a real city unlike the bigger and supposedly wealthier Kitchener/Waterloo & I place it with Ottawa as my second favourite Ontario city. | ||
jjaba (198.81.17.187 - 198.81.17.187) |
Isn't there an auto assembly operation in St. Thomas? I thought I've seen car stickers, FOB St. Thomas. Am I right? Sonny Rollins wrote a wonderful jazz tune, St. Thomas. Do you know it? Who's your favorite artist to play it other than Sonny hisse'f? I saw him at The Minor Key on Dexter Avenue back sometime ago. jjaba | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
Not exactly..... We've got the format plant. We make car parts. We don't put them together. | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
Next comes the courthouse, just south of downtown.   | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
We're also the self-proclaimed railway capital of Canada. If you ask me, the title should really belong to Monteal, or possibly Winnipeg, but we do have a lot for a city of our size. I'm just including a picture of our railway station, but we've also got a large railway muesum behind the station, along with steam rides every Sunday. Abandoned for years, there's currently a non-profit group restoring the station.  | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
But as for ruins, the station doesn't take the prize. That belongs to my personal favorite building, Alma Collage. The central wing was completed the same year St. Thomas became a cit and grew from there. It was a private girls school recieved a goodly number of international students. Unfortuantly it had to close in the 80's. I'm sorry I can only post two photos of this beauty. I'm sure I could fill the entire forum with pictures of it and still have nuances left over I havn't shown. I only hope it gets restored before it gets torn down.   | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
And of course, there are always a few nice buildings every city has to loose.  The Grand Central Hotel is probably the worst loss.  The old post office is number two. The building just behind the post office has also been lost and were the offices of the St. Thomas Times. Both these pictures came out of our local art mueseum. | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
Now our downtown. It's spread out forever along Talbot Street. Development started in the west and has moved steadily east. The city has never really jumped over Kettle Creek, so that a walk from the creek to 1st ave. ends up being a tour of comercial styles starting in the early 1800's and ending up in a new shopping plaza. Most of the nicest buildings are around City Hall, as that's when the city was by far the richest.  The awning proclaims this the Free Trade building.  And this is the exchange building.  If you were to remove the paint and strip everything down to the orriginal brick pattern (still visible on the second unit from the left), this could be one of the nicest blocks in town.  just a block of stores I happen to like. | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
The whole city's dotted with nice houses, but th nicest are all in the courthouse district. As for my favorite, it's always been a toss-up between these two. I can never make up my mind.   | ||
jjaba (198.81.17.24 - 198.81.17.24) |
Your downtown doesn't have many holes in it, and that's a good sign of a potential for rehab. By the way, what car parts are made in St Thomas and for which vehicles? Great photos and post cars. It looks cold there with the snow. True Canadian winters, eh. jjaba | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
And as I'm trying to include the victorian masterpieces, I might as well include these two churches.   | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.227 - 209.239.6.227) |
And to tell you the truth I wasn't going to include this, because I actually find it rather insignificant compared to the rest of our history. But as it's been mentioned there is a Jumbo monument in the east end. Jumbo met her end being hit by a train north of town.  | ||
the rock (67.217.175.148 - 67.217.175.148) |
BENJAMIN--- It may have been insignificant to you, but Jumbo and I thank you for the pix of the famous statute of the elephant. It is not fun being hit by a train ,but I doubt it did much good to the locomotive either. I will take Jumbo over the Fist any day. | ||
D-Day (68.41.212.17 - 68.41.212.17) |
WARNING: Thread plot twist......... Any of our older formers have memories of Paulina, the Zoo elephant, or am I stretching a little bit for time, here? MK http://www.motorcitylives.com | ||
Andrew in Windsor (64.228.146.118 - 64.228.146.118) |
Benjamin, doesn't St Thomas have the Ford assembly plant that makes the Crown Victoria's, Grand Marquis' & now the Mercury Marauder? Isn't there also a large truck assembly plant? I want to say it's Freightliner | ||
rustic (130.132.243.26 - 130.132.243.26) |
My older crown vic was assembled in St. Thomas, Canada. I thought Ford has 2 assy. plants in St. Thomas: the CV/GM and a truck plant. I may be worng about the truck plant. -rustic | ||
the rock (67.217.249.110 - 67.217.249.110) |
D-day, Not only Paulina, but how 'bout Joe Mendy, the Chimp? | ||
DigitalVision (64.12.96.230 - 64.12.96.230) |
Well, great downtown there. Those are great buildings Mr. Vasquez, and great photography. One thing to note is that many buildings of the era you showed actually had very vibrant paint jobs on them. Its a trademark of the victorian era...a great example of this is some buildings in the Bay City, MI area. Colour was a sign of opulence, so they spruced everything up with it when they could...so stripping down to the brick I'm willing to bet isn't always original..but with only Black and White photgraphy, its sometimes dificult unless you get a specialist that can tell you exactly what colours were there through sampling the actual surface. Excellent work, and best of luck! | ||
The Ghettoman (205.188.208.135 - 205.188.208.135) |
Nice pictures of St. Thomas, Mr. Vazquez. But, their downtown needs a little fixing up. It's so amazing that any small Canadian town can look like a minature ghetto. Just like any small American towns. Once there were boomtowns of the early 20 Century now reduced to has beens waiting to see what's next for the future. | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.5.77 - 209.239.5.77) |
Ford's assembly plant is in Talbotville. It's a hamlet just northeast of the city. They call it St. Thomas only because no one can locate Talbotville on a map. | ||
jjaba, monolingual (198.81.17.31 - 198.81.17.31) |
Thanks Benjamin. So which vehicles are rolling out the back door at Talbotville? I've just scoped it on my GPS Northstar System. Do they give tours in English? What day? jjaba | ||
erikd (12.87.60.145 - 12.87.60.145) |
I spent 3 weeks working in St. Thomas in '97. I was working on the Magna plant. The function of the plant is to build frames for GM trucks and busses. It is huge. It takes 10 minuets to walk from one end of the plant to the other. It is so big that the lunch truck made 3 or 4 stops just for the workers inside the plant. One of the funniest memories I have of St. Thomas was a dumpy little strip club at the end of downtown. It was called "The Nudie Bar". A group of the guys went there after work one day, and we saw one of the most interesting performances that I have ever witnessed in a strip club. I have told this story to a few of the forumers, and they seemed to get a kick out of it. Ben... Is the Nudie Bar still open? | ||
DigitalVision (205.188.208.135 - 205.188.208.135) |
ErikD, if you started a band, it would be Elastic Titties. LOL..... | ||
Benjamin A. Vazquez (209.239.6.176 - 209.239.6.176) |
We have too many strip bars in the city. You get adept at ignoring them after a while. If you don't go inside, it's not your problem. | ||
Keith (12.47.84.51 - 12.47.84.51) |
Erik , you're going to leave us hanging and not tell the story? |
