Hamilton Beach, now part of the city and highly commercialized, was once the summer home of scores of prominent Hamilton families who built large summer homes there for occupancy a few months of the year.
Construction of the Hamilton and Northwestern Railway line across the sand
strip in the 1850's brought about the summer home activity, but the paving of the Beach highway in 1923 was the beginning of the end of the Beach as a quiet summer resort.
VERY FEW of the larger summer homes remain in their original state. All have been winterized for year around occupancy, many have been modernized in appearance and some of them have been turned into apartments. Several burned down. The vacant land which lay between the big homes - they were mostly in the area between Station 14 and the canal - has all been built up by a more modern type of home.
"Most of the big summer homes were built before my time," said Royston Kime, 63, a few days ago. "My mother, who spent her life on the Beach, told me about them being built in her time. The 1870's and 1880's were big building years.
Mr. Kime's mother, the former Minnie Corey, was born on the Beach, a daughter of Fred N. Corey who, as a barefoot boy, accompanied his father, Maurice Corey, from New Brunswick to the Beach in an ox cart in 1843. Historic records show, Mr. Kime said that Maurice Corey and his young son arrived at the Beach just three days after John Dynes.
Mr. Kime, who resides with his sister, Mrs. Le Roy Wilson, at 548 Beach Boulevard, said that he clearly recalled "when it was all fruit orchards from Station 8 to Dynes Hotel and Harry Freed had a market garden at Station 8 along what is now known as Kenmore Boulevard.
PROMINENT Hamilton people who used to have summer homes there, he recalled were Sir John Gibson, Col. Malloch, H. B. Greening, the Moodies,
C. W. Bell, C. S. Stewart, Frank E. Walker, Otto Cook, the Strouds and the Lennox family, and the Biggars, George Park, the Clokes, Graftons, Counsells Carscallens, McLarens, Glasscos and Crerars.
The properties gradually changed in ownership, he said and it "just wasn't possible to keep track of all the people," One of the few remaining summer cottages still used as such is "Killarney," generally believed to be at least 100 years old. A former Glassco home standing at the end of the Bayside promenade is another house occupied as a summer home only.
Another Beach old-time residence which is being torn down at the present time is the former Edward Homewood house between Stations 5 and 6, which had been modernized by a stone front and other improvements several years ago.
"One would hardly know the big summer homes of old any more, they've been changed so much," said Isaac Christian, another lifelong resident whose mother, the former Margaret Fletcher, was also born on the Beach. "The whole Beach has changed completely from what it used to be."
Old residents recall the days of the radial cars which, in the heyday of the electrical lines, carried great throngs of city people to the Beach resort on holidays and weekends. The line started operations in 1896, was double-tracked in 1906, and went out of business in 1929.
"THOUSANDS come in open air cars, used in summer months, to attend the great band concerts, regattas, yacht races, dances and lawn bowling, at the canal," recalled Mr. Kime. "The summer residents didn't have too much privacy around their places when it happened "People started to lose all interest in the summer homes during the depression years of the 1930's" he said. "The working class from the city started living here. Then, in 1939, war broke out and disoriented everything."
I was interested in reading an article written in 1926 which predicted that the completion of the Windermere cut-off from the Beach to the city, would make traffic on the , Beach strip the heaviest of any highway in Canada. Whoever wrote that article 32 years ago had apparently had a glimpse into the future, although I doubt if he ever visualized the bottle-neck the Beach was to become.
It's hard to realize today with the steady stream of truck, and car traffic roaring -past that Hamilton Beach was once the preferred summer resort of Hamilton's prominent families. The summer resort has gone, but that's the price of progress.
Construction of the Hamilton and Northwestern Railway line across the sand
strip in the 1850's brought about the summer home activity, but the paving of the Beach highway in 1923 was the beginning of the end of the Beach as a quiet summer resort.
VERY FEW of the larger summer homes remain in their original state. All have been winterized for year around occupancy, many have been modernized in appearance and some of them have been turned into apartments. Several burned down. The vacant land which lay between the big homes - they were mostly in the area between Station 14 and the canal - has all been built up by a more modern type of home.
"Most of the big summer homes were built before my time," said Royston Kime, 63, a few days ago. "My mother, who spent her life on the Beach, told me about them being built in her time. The 1870's and 1880's were big building years.
Mr. Kime's mother, the former Minnie Corey, was born on the Beach, a daughter of Fred N. Corey who, as a barefoot boy, accompanied his father, Maurice Corey, from New Brunswick to the Beach in an ox cart in 1843. Historic records show, Mr. Kime said that Maurice Corey and his young son arrived at the Beach just three days after John Dynes.
Mr. Kime, who resides with his sister, Mrs. Le Roy Wilson, at 548 Beach Boulevard, said that he clearly recalled "when it was all fruit orchards from Station 8 to Dynes Hotel and Harry Freed had a market garden at Station 8 along what is now known as Kenmore Boulevard.
PROMINENT Hamilton people who used to have summer homes there, he recalled were Sir John Gibson, Col. Malloch, H. B. Greening, the Moodies,
C. W. Bell, C. S. Stewart, Frank E. Walker, Otto Cook, the Strouds and the Lennox family, and the Biggars, George Park, the Clokes, Graftons, Counsells Carscallens, McLarens, Glasscos and Crerars.
The properties gradually changed in ownership, he said and it "just wasn't possible to keep track of all the people," One of the few remaining summer cottages still used as such is "Killarney," generally believed to be at least 100 years old. A former Glassco home standing at the end of the Bayside promenade is another house occupied as a summer home only.
Another Beach old-time residence which is being torn down at the present time is the former Edward Homewood house between Stations 5 and 6, which had been modernized by a stone front and other improvements several years ago.
"One would hardly know the big summer homes of old any more, they've been changed so much," said Isaac Christian, another lifelong resident whose mother, the former Margaret Fletcher, was also born on the Beach. "The whole Beach has changed completely from what it used to be."
Old residents recall the days of the radial cars which, in the heyday of the electrical lines, carried great throngs of city people to the Beach resort on holidays and weekends. The line started operations in 1896, was double-tracked in 1906, and went out of business in 1929.
"THOUSANDS come in open air cars, used in summer months, to attend the great band concerts, regattas, yacht races, dances and lawn bowling, at the canal," recalled Mr. Kime. "The summer residents didn't have too much privacy around their places when it happened "People started to lose all interest in the summer homes during the depression years of the 1930's" he said. "The working class from the city started living here. Then, in 1939, war broke out and disoriented everything."
I was interested in reading an article written in 1926 which predicted that the completion of the Windermere cut-off from the Beach to the city, would make traffic on the , Beach strip the heaviest of any highway in Canada. Whoever wrote that article 32 years ago had apparently had a glimpse into the future, although I doubt if he ever visualized the bottle-neck the Beach was to become.
It's hard to realize today with the steady stream of truck, and car traffic roaring -past that Hamilton Beach was once the preferred summer resort of Hamilton's prominent families. The summer resort has gone, but that's the price of progress.