WINDSOR | Construction - News and Development

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The John Davis house origionally built in 1890 and known to many of us as the former home of Danny's 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 🞵🞵🞵🞵 is being proposed to be torn down and replaced with a two storey office building which will occupy a smaller footprint than the currently standing building, and seems to be done in a style that fits in with the Walkerville area.

source: http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/04/29/...-and-its-hot-strippers-to-be-demolished/

It began as the stylish home of a staunch Catholic mayor before morphing into a hotel and ballroom gathering spot for Windsor society elite and then a riverfront drinking destination.

And on weekend nights in its final years of occupancy, the John Davis House at 1271 Riverside Dr. E. would draw crowds of women screaming their approval as male dancers stripped down.

“Danny’s never had a Saturday with less than a thousand people,” said owner Rob Katzman, proprietor of Danny’s and other Windsor strip clubs.

Thickening of the border, and a new passport requirement for travellers, saw business plummet, and Danny’s strippers had to put their clothes back on. It’s successor, relocated in 2008 to the former Jason’s 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 🞵🞵🞵🞵 downtown, also eventually closed.

On Monday, city council will be asked to approve demolition of the 2 1/2 storey former home, hotel, tavern and strip bar, built around 1890 in the Italianate Revival style at the north end of Moy Hall, a farm and trading enterprise dating to the 18th century.

“Very little of the house is left,” said city heritage planner John Calhoun. The elegant porch had long since been covered in, and the original home has suffered large indistinct expansions and vinyl cladding.

The recommendation to council now is to let the bulldozers at it. Under the Ontario Heritage Act, councils have 60 days to consider a demolition application for any property, like the John Davis House, listed on a municipal heritage register.

“At this point it doesn’t matter … I wouldn’t go to bat for the Davis House,” said Evelyn McLean, Windsor’s first heritage planner.

John Davis, chief distillery inspector for the Dominion of Canada and principal shareholder of the Windsor Street Railway and Electric Light Plant, was elected Windsor’s mayor five times from 1897 to 1901. He lived there with his second wife, Frances Baby Davis, who was related to Windsor’s historic Baby family and was head of the local Catholic Women’s League and an altar society president.

As a widow, Baby Davis moved in 1921 to 1077 Ouellette Ave., the later-named Grayson House that city council voted last week to have demolished following a heated debate.

By 1923, the John Davis House had become the Scottish Rite (Masons) Home. In 1937 it was the Scrivens Hotel, and by 1940, as the Bellevue Hotel, it was hosting society parties. It later became the Bellevue Tavern, and in 1982 it was transformed into Danny’s of Windsor, featuring 🞵🞵🞵🞵 male dancers.

“The neighbours are going to love it … it’s not going to be a parking lot,” said Katzman, referring to the fate of a number of recent heritage demolitions across the city, including, soon, the Grayson House.

The plan is for a “very attractive” two-storey brick office building with a smaller building footprint than what is currently there, said Jeff Slopen, Katzman’s lawyer in the transaction. Such a development would require an application for a change from the property’s current residential zoning.

Slopen said the property is being sold to Dino Maggio’s Mid South Land Development Corporation.

The current building



The proposed new building.


I don't mind the style of the building, I just wish it was a bit bigger, and located downtown.

P.S. What's with Windsor tearing down all the heritage stuff? It's kind of sad, and I know that some buildings get to a point where it might not be worth saving, but we've torn down some other buildings that probably should still be standing.