Historic Buildings Burn in NOTL

October 25th: it finally happened! How many times have we said 'Boy, if one of thes old buildings ever caught fire, it would go up like kindling.'. And sure enough, it happened. The cause has not yet been determined or announced; all that is known is that the fire started in the basement of The Copper Leaf. It spread rapidly up through the building and next door to the building housing Shaw Leather and Sotheby's Real Estate and several residential apartments upstairs. It was only thanks to our local volunteer firefighters and the assistance of St. Catharines and Niagara Falls Fire Departments that the other buildings on the block were not also destroyed. In particular, the Owl and the Pussycat building is adjacent to Sotheby's and is one of the oldest on the street. Here are photos from the morning after, the first being the rear of The Copper Leaf. The other photos are from Queen Street.



The buildings have now been torn down and the owners have said they will rebuild. Although they may be able to duplicate the storefront appearance, they can not replace the lost history. A real loss, but it truly could have been much worse.