The Bailey Broom Factory

The industrial red-brick warehouse running eastwest along Cataraqui Street was constructed in 1894 by the Imperial Oil Company. The Glenbow Archives maintains archives of Imperial Oil installations. These two show the (later) Bailey Broom Factory site at Rideau and Cataraqui Streets. Thanks to Andrew Jeanes for the links.

Tank cars, box cars, and a horse that knows "Whoa!"A second photo taken from the roof of the house in line with the telegraph pole shown in the photo above, looking toward the tank cars down the spur:

In 1903, the Bailey Broom Company purchased the property, and, by 1904-1905, commissioned well-known local architect W. Newlands & Sons to design an office addition on the corner of Cataraqui and Rideau streets. The concrete warehouse running north-south along Rideau Street (recently demolished as part of the rehabilitation due to structural instability) was constructed sometime between 1904 and 1911.

The Bailey Broom Company was a partnership among Samuel R. Bailey, William J. Lee, and John M. Hughes. For Samuel Bailey, broom making was a family business, and his father William Bailey and Uncle Benjamin Bailey had been making brooms since the 1850s, some reports say 1857. In 1896, Bailey & Co. broommakers moved into their new factory at 299 Queen Street, beginning manufacturing on January 11. A kiln and 15-hp electric motor replaced their old steam engine. The city granted the company a tax exemption. 

A 1956 account mentions "Bailey burned to the ground on July 22, 1903 with a loss of $30,000. [Perhaps this fire was at 299 Queen, and necessitated the move to a new building?] Masons were just completing the new Bailey factory on Rideau in January of 1904, making it soon ready for occupation. Bailey 's hockey team was known as the 'Sticks and Straws', as noted in a 1907 account of a game played in Sydenham. In 1917, a report mentions two cars being shunted into the Baylie [sic] siding then taken to the mainline. A 1918 news recap mentioned an earlier 1893 item "25 carloads of brown corn arrived over the K&P for Bailey's broom factory". A 1929 article mentions three broom factories operating in Kingston: Bailey, Gould and Crawford.

The Bailey Broom Company employed 55 men and produced 157 dozen 'Universal Cleaner' brooms daily (that's 1,884) until 1923, when the business closed and the property was sold to a subsidiary of Imperial Oil, the Queen City Oil Company (some accounts say the British-American Oil Co., and that B-A bought the Bailey property from J.M. Hughes. Mr. Hughes would reportedly be carrying on broommaking and the other business of Watson Manufacturing Co. at another location.) [Was this the MacPherson building on Rideau Street?} B-A erected tanks for storage, and used the railway siding to give access to [tank] cars. Negotiations were completed by Mr. George Fyffe of Ottawa, the B-A manager for Eastern Ontario. John Hughes, former owner of Bailey and former mayor, died on August 15, 1953. 

There are few traces of B-A's years on Rideau Street, though a few Whig clippings attest to its location:

Congratulations to Jackson Motor Sales, January 26, 1929 (above) 

and a B-A truck incident from June 16, 1932 (below).

Someone had the energy for three break-ins on February 7, 1944:

In the City of Kingston report on the redevelopment, there's another interesting historical snapshot of the Bailey Broom Factory: 

There was a time when the Bailey property had a CN spur but National Grocers had none - 1947 fire insurance map (above). They sold the property in 1959 to Quintal & England, a roofing supplies company. 

In use by Quintal and England roofing contractors, the entire front of the building/office is painted white and large signs erected on both roofs facing Rideau Street. (1962 telephone book ad):

Marc Shaw kindly shared this 1989 view (below). Note that the office is still whitewashed. That firm ceased operations in 1994 and the building has been unused since. Then, a long period during which urban explorers (call them trespassers if you prefer) photographed the area, calling it Ice City during its period of ownership by the adjacent Rosen Fuels.

This time of disuse is where I became involved, in a vanishingly infinitesimal way, in the preservation and non-demolition of the Bailey Broom Factory. My 2001 photos were noticed in my main Canadian railway blog, Trackside Treasure by one of the building's saviours, and used as part of their campaign. 

On April 15, 2014, the City of Kingston purchased the building and a lot including 305 to 323 Rideau Street with the condition that the factory was demolished by August 15, 2014. The City had intended to improve the area and make way for the since-cancelled Wellington Street Extension, which would have resulted in a major city artery cutting through Douglas Fluhrer Park.

As circled below, the history of the building was unknown at the time, and apparently unimportant in the eyes of the development-minded. But its history and its Newlands connection would be what enabled it to be saved. Some contemporaneous Whig clippings from the time, 2014-2016 during which demolition was delayed until a purchaser was found:

Notable proponents were Mary Farrar, Laura Murray, and the Sinclairs (who first contacted me by email). It was they who fortuitously overheard a conversation between the city and a heritage brick dealer, discussing the demolition. Not stopping there, this news was conveyed to interested individuals and a campaign ensued!

March 2019 UPDATE: the building is under renovation by RAW. The original building and the Newlands office addition was largely untouched; the structurally-unstable additions were demolished. In 2019, the white addition along Rideau Street has been removed, with the Cataraqui Street side being stabilized and getting a new roof and windows. Global News coverage:

August 2021 UPDATE:The building looks complete, the quoted cost was $1.7 million. The north wall is sided, parking lot finished and landscaping completed, plus bike shelter built:

Here's some detail on the renovation from an article in the Skeleton Park Press, Fall 2021 edition:

Along Rideau and Cataraqui Streets, the red-brick warehouse and the Newlands & Sons  office addition

remain relatively unaltered. Brickwork has been re-pointed by Edgewater Stonemasons using historically-appropriate techniques, original wooden-sash windows on the office addition have been repaired by Browne’s Carpentry and Joinery, wood detailing in the pediment has been repaired and repainted, and new period-appropriate windows have been inserted into original window openings on the warehouse. 

Small modifications to accommodate new uses in the factory building include the lengthening of two window openings on the east elevation to improve access from Cataraqui Street and the insertion of steel lintels over the window openings. The east and north elevation required reconstruction — while the east elevation has been restored with replacement bricks as needed, the north elevation was completely rebuilt. Here, RAW seized the opportunity to inject an exciting, attractive, and compatible new layer of architecture into the building, recreating the original massing and form but cladding the structure with a modern zinc finish and large glazed openings that bring a wonderful quality of light into the building.

Along Rideau Street, the former concrete warehouse wing was in an active state of collapse and had to be removed in its entirety. Although that wing was not identified as a heritage attribute of the site, RAW designed a bicycle parking and waste and recycling storage area that delineates the former building’s footprint and reflects the original form of the concrete wing – an engaging, interpretive, and functional design solution. Add to the mix environmental and sustainability considerations such as a solar panel-ready roof, radiant in-floor heating, energy-recovery ventilators, daylight sensors, and well-insulated wall and roof assemblies, and the Bailey Broom Factory is the poster child of innovative and thoughtful adaptive reuse.

RAW aims to bring the community into this building, making it a local hub of sorts. RAW will house their Kingston office in the red-brick warehouse, alongside dedicated co-working space for future design-oriented tenants as soon as the post-pandemic world permits. A roughed-in café area awaits an

entrepreneurial Kingstonian.

RAW Design bought and revitalized the historic building beginning in 2016. The architectural firm opened its Kingston office within the updated “Broom Factory” in 2021. Later that year, the Kingston Canadian Film Festival (KCFF) moved in as tenants, with the shared vision of creating a venue that could function as both office space and event space. The Kingston Film & Media Office (2022), KPP Concerts (2002-current), and TULA café (2023-2024) also became tenants in the space.

January 2022 UPDATE: A Frontenac Heritage Foundation certificate of commendation was awarded to owner RAW Factory Inc. Certificates of appreciation were given to architect RAW Design Inc., heritage consultant Lindsay Reid, PEAK Construction Group Ltd., Craig Beattie, Edgewater Stonemasons and Ciaran Browne for their work on the windows.  

The new space was featured as the Broom Factory in the January/February 2023 Kingston Life (Krista Jahnke photography):

Plan of the building and site from the Kingston Canadian Film Festival website. A wholesale change in form and function, but most importantly, preserved and still vital!

The next phase is the proposed accommodations to be built just to the north, still unbuilt as of 2024 and reportedly facing significant challenges to being built: