Five Miles of Grit: A long walk down Barton St. in Hamilton

[flar]

HAMILTON NEIGHBOURHOODS:
Corktown • Durand • Central • Dundas • Locke St. South • Burlington • Stinson • Westdale • St. Clair • Keith • Landsdale
The Delta • Gibson • Jamesville • Concession Street • Durand North • Durand South • Old Dundas Houses • Hess Village • Barton Street
Ancaster • North Kirkendall • South Kirkendall • McMaster University • Downtown • The Bayfront • The North End • Kenilworth
Mountain Brow • Textile District • Strathcona • North Stipley • Flamborough • Beasley • Chedoke • Stoney Creek • The Beach Strip

HAMILTON FEATURES:
C I T Y _ L I G H T S • Stone Hamilton • Twilight of the Industrial Age • Twilight of the Industrial Age II
Stone in Dundas and Ancaster • Goodbye, Hamilton (from 43 floors up) • Dirty Brick • Day for Night
This broken down old city still manages to wake up every morning... • Everywhere, Ontario • < R - E - T - R - O >
HAMILTON | Scenes from the cutting room floor • S U B U R B I A ! • Everywhere, Ontario • Hamilton Rowhouses
< H E A V Y <> I N D U S T R Y > • Old Man Winter vs. Hamilton





The Infamous Barton Street

This is an in-depth tour of Hamilton's Barton St. from Bay St. to Parkdale Ave. This might well be the grittiest stretch of road in Canada.



It starts off innocently...



Note that many of the trees in these pics still have leaves in November (some are still green). This is due to Hamilton's milder microclimate. Everywhere else in Ontario the trees are pretty much bare.





We arrive at James Street















This is a prison



really, it is



This is across the street





I'm not exactly sure what this woman was doing, but she had no pants...




Construction...


...former industrial lands...



...an old school





While I was taking this picture, right beside me, two men handed a prostitute some crack. I would have photographed it for you, but the men objected.






Hamilton General Hospital














Now to Barton Village, I took a couple pics around here back in my "Inner City Hamilton" thread.














A practitioner of the oldest profession...









I would like to have taken more people pictures, but the people around here mostly objected before I even tried. A few asked me what I was doing taking pictures. They're justifiably suspicious about this kind of attention.





















Now we're around Wentworth Street





















The cops were chasing someone down the alley









A quick look down a residential side street








Another sidestreet








Sherman Ave.


Now we're entering a Polish area, just east of Sherman Ave.

























Still going...






















The buildings aren't quite as old now as we approach Ottawa Street



























We finally reach Ottawa Street



The Centre Mall occupies the north side of the street, I didn't take many pictures of this, I trust you've all seen a mall before


















At Kenilworth Ave.












I'm really tired of walking now so I'll end it...thanks if you've made it this far.

[shappy]

wow, that is nastay!

great photo here:

[rgalston]

Very nice. Reminds me of Winnipeg's Selkirk Avenue.

[LoKKiTo]

Ghetto, can pass for inner-city USA. Crime also seems to be a problem in that area.


Projects?

[niwell]

Nice pictures, that does look like a rather sketchy stretch of street. As gritty as it is though, there is definetly a lot of potential there.

[kool maudit]

wtf?

[flar]

^^Obviously its a ghost! here's a higher res closeup


@LoKKiTo, I'm not sure but I don't think those are projects. In Ontario "projects" usually take the form of geared to income townhouse complexes rather than highrise apartments.

[CCF]

Wow, very interesting.

You just don't see this sorta thing in Regina. We have vacant buildings, but nothing to that extent.

I would like to get out to Hamilton.

[softee]

It's almost as gritty as Sudbury!

[boden]

Probably how most people picture Hamilton anyway! Good post!

[matt602]

I thought I saw you yesterday. I passed you on the bus going West at Victoria. You were probably taking a picture of that Caribbean food place. I figured it was you since nobody else in this city would bother to take pictures along Barton

Nice pics by the way, the stuff I see every day. It really doesn't seem so bad in person, but in pictures it looks right up there with Buffalo's nastyness.

[flar]

^^It probably was me...there weren't a lot of people out in the damp cloudy weather. I guess this just shows one reason why the design of these old neighbourhoods is good: you always run into people. I even saw my wife and a couple of her co-workers walking down the street on their lunch break.

[SteelTown]

Yep and it appears you ran into my aunt as well *embarrassed*

[olga]

Very interesting, thanks for the tour!

[circle33]

Thanks for risking life and limb for us. That was quite an eye opener.

[MolsonExport]

Wicked Grit. As for the Grit Capital of Canada, it has to be Montreal. There is just soooo much grit in Montreal.

[J. Will]

Crime may or may not be a major problem in the area (I don't know), but Hamilton, like other Canadian cities, has low rates of murder and other violent crimes (I think they average 5-10 murders a year). Most of the crime is property crime and things of that nature.

[matt602]

petty crimes maybe, but not major crimes.

[raisethehammer]

I love it....great photos.
Most potential in the city lies on this street. A great streetwall still exists and the foundation is there to work from:
Ethnic eateries - I love Duartes, Staropolskie, Frank's Sicilia and many others you photographed here. The biggest problem is really the taxes. Even artists haven't shown up yet in large numbers like you would expect along such a corridor.
I know someone who once tried to buy a building here to renovate it into lofts with streetfront commercial. The empty, decayed building paid something like $5,000 a year in taxes. He was told that once his plans were complete he would be paying over $50,000 a year in taxes! And the building was only $200,000 to purchase. Needless to say that idea (along with everyone else's who's tried in this corridor) died.
Until the city decides that suburban sprawl will pay it's own way instead of robbing from neighbourhoods like this to subsidize it, we'll never see change.

[Tony]

Go Hamilton!



An old bank turn into private residence?! What would you do with the old vault... hmmm. You could keep your "product" & revenue there!