Thursday, January 5, 2012

CLE Racing tidbit and a Chinese Laundry......


This is a typical 1958 Photo of the CLE Racetrack pits in Fort William Ontario as seen from the Grandstand facing south/east.  In the center is the #19 Louis Tocheri car '32 Ford Coupe with his hauler vividly painted "Tocheri Brothers".  If you click on the photo to get a closer shot you will also see a pickup truck with "East End Service" painted on the side.  East End Service still exists to this day.  What you will see as you scroll down is a few photos showing you the exact location of this photo relative to the google earth photo today, using a few houses as locator's.


Note these three houses in this closer photo to see where they are today.


Here are the houses in the gold square above and also in the square below.  You can see that the pits and the track completely surrounded the present day golf dome.


The aerial photo shows Fort William Road, Northern Ave., the Coliseum building, the Golf dome, the Silver City Theatre, the Neebing River and the Fort William Road bridge crossing it.  From these photos you should be able to locate the spot where all the oil and grease still exists under the Golf dome parking lot.  Next:  A Port Arthur thought!

This is an incredible photo from the Thunder Bay Online web page showing a Chinese Laundry just to the south of the old News Chronicle building in Port Arthur Ontario.  This looks like a 1938 Pontiac or Oldsmobile coupe sitting proudly up front.  I wonder what the two chaps are talking about?  Just to the right of this building is the old News Chronicle(Port Arthur newspaper) building.


Click on these two pictures to enlarge them.  The photo on the left is the News Chronicle building showing an arrow in orange going down Arthur Street(now Red River Road) and turning right onto a very narrow Water Street.  CNR and CPR gave up quite a few tracks so that Water Street could be widened.  The black and white photo also shows the Pagota before it was moved further towards the lake and the majestic CNR station with a couple of steam engines huffing away in front of it.  The last photo on the right is the Ontario Government building that was built over the site of the News Chronicle building and is taken at pretty much the same place where the Chinese Laundry was.  I actually prefer the old buildings to the new Parthenon that the government built.  No thought to preserving anything in this city!!  Thanks to Thunder Bay online for use of the photo of the Chinese Laundry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pretty amazing photo; it has a fine-art quality to it, like photos taken for the NRA in the U.S. at that time of crumbling urban infrastructure.