This house is located at 99 Essa St. (on the southwest corner of Frederick and Essa Streets). It was once the This house is located at 99 Essa St. (on the southwest corner of Frederick and Essa Streets). It was once the home of Dick Lee. (1)
This house is located at 62 Frederick Street. The section of this street from Moore Street to Barrie Street was originally known as Letitia St., and was named after Letitia Magee (a land speculator in the 1830’s). The name was later changed to Frederick St. to avoid confusion during emergency calls. (1, 2)
The Dougald MacDonald House is located mid-block at 63 Frederick Street. The house was built pre-1900 (around 1882) in the Ontario Vernacular Cottage style. It was built by George (Geordy) MacDonald, a bachelor, stone mason, and contractor who emigrated from Scotland at the age of 27. He was responsible for building homes and schools in this community, as well as the first Presbyterian Church in Bradford that once stood on John Street. The one-storey, three-bay cottage has a square plan with a centre hall. A box hall was typical for this style. The house has a symmetrical façade and a simple, gable roof. The grade-level entrance has a single entrance door with a rectangular, glazed transom. The large, 8/8, double-hung windows have plain, wood trim and sills. The house has wood frame construction covered with aluminum siding. According to the 2000 inventory, the original siding was probably wood. It also notes that the building was largely obscured by trees and that it probably had few decorative details originally. A photo (and brief article about the renovations) in Century Home Magazine (April 2002, page 18) reveals that the two cedar trees in the front yard have been removed and that a porch has been added at the front of the house. (1, 2, 3, 5, Century Home Magazine)
The house located mid-block at 56 Hurd St. was built in the 1860-1880’s in the Gothic Revival style. The level of the sidewalk above the front yard suggests that this house was built before the street was paved or town services were installed. It was the home of the Gummerson family (before moving to 151 Church Street). Charlie Wilson and his family lived here in later years. The 1½-storey, ‘L’-shaped house has an asymmetrical façade, a centre hall, and a medium-pitched, gable roof. The roof has an off-centre gable at the front façade projection. The Regency-style entrance has a flat, narrow transom with multiple lights and sidelights set into a rectangular opening. Wide, wood framing is topped with a shelf projection. The house has tall, narrow windows with high floor to ceiling heights. They are set into narrow, rectangular openings with plain, wood frames topped by shelf projections and plain, wood sills. A ground-floor bay window has a shallow hip roof supported on brackets. The 2/2 windows are the only original ones in the structure. Wood frame construction is covered with vinyl siding which replaces the original cove siding. The house has a parged, stone foundation. When the house was inventoried in 2000, a single fragment of ‘gingerbread’ was found hanging from one corner of the eaves. This suggests that more elaborate decoration was original to the house. (1, 3)
The barn located on the east side of Essa St. (south of Frederick St.) belonged to the former Anglican Manse. The Manse was located at 81 Frederick St. (1, 2)
The building located at 10 Holland St. East in this 1995 photo is not the original structure on this property. That building was destroyed in the big fire of 1871 and the space stood empty for many years. A man from Aurora hired Art and Leonard Saint in 1936 to build a movie theatre on the vacant lot. It was to be a winter and fall project after they finished building the Post Office on Barrie Street. The Holland Theatre, as it became known, was completed in 1937. It had a basement, a front projection room upstairs, a cement foundation, cement floors and red, block, tile walls. All of the quicklime that was used was hauled in from Hagerville and made into mortar in the basement. The mortar contained camel, goat, and cow hair which came from Colles’ Leather business in Aurora. A steel, suspended lath was plastered in the ceiling. The roof was flat and sloping and the stage was at the rear. The owners in the 1940’s and early 1950’s were Mr. Rees and Mr. Hobberlin. George Carson bought the theatre after WWII. The structure later housed many businesses, including a Deemac Furniture store. The building is currently (2014) unoccupied. (1, 2)
