Wealth of information

Posted by Magda
I just spent a bunch of hours sifting through layer after layer of Guelph history, looking for details on the story of the Trafalgar building on Woolwich Street. I started online looking at photo archives, got help from civic museum staff to go through their photos and old phone books, and scanned through assorted history books and a mega-index of historical resources at the library. I gave up, and about an hour later got a call from a librarian who had kept looking after I left, and found the information I was looking for.

How nice to have all these resources to rely on.

(The building, in case you're wondering, was built around 1910 as Commercial Motor Bodies. Read more Saturday.)

Comments

[Edward Pickersgill]

Must have been a small concentration of transportation manufacturing on that stretch. Where the Matrix Centre stands now 141 Woolwich was formerly the site of Muller Auto Body. In its earliest days it was a "carriage manufacturing". Some of the original red brick was saved an incorporated into our entry lobby.

Ampersand Printing has occupied the basement level of the Trafalgar Building since the late 1970s. Several Guelph history books have been printed and bound at Ampersand... some of them with a wealth of photos. Perhaps a trip down to & to talk with Mike McDonald would be a good initiative for a history buff reporter.

[Magda]

Thanks Ed, I'm working on that :)
What Muller auto there until it was torn down to make room for Matrix, or was there something else in between?

[Edward Pickersgill]

We bought the Muller Auto body building from Mr. Muller. As part of our cost-saving and ecological awareness (yes they can both occur at the same time) most of the building was dismantled by Mennonites from over KW way and carted over to Waterloo County to be used in a variety of rural projects. It was awesome to watch them take apart the building.

I have about 1,000 colour photos of the process from the dismantling of Muller Auto through the gradual appearance over the next months of the Matrix Centre. Perhaps some day I'll get someone to scan them and put together a tight little 5 minute video presentation with rockin' background music...

The public meetings we held on site to ease the fears of the nimby folks were actually held in the parking garage at the back, lower level of the original building.