The Bailey Broom Factory

The industrial red-brick warehouse running eastwest along Cataraqui Street was constructed in 1894 by the Imperial Oil Company. 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 exemtpion. 

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 Dailey'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 (that's 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. 

In this City of Kingston report, 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. That firm ceased operations in 1994 and the building has been unused since.

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. Note that the office is still whitewashed:

More Bailey Broom factory resources:

• Urbanex (urban-exploration) modern-day photos.
• City of Kingston report to Heritage Kingston.
• the Full Report here!!!

March 2019 UPDATE: the building is under renovation by RAW. 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 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.

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):

The next phase is the proposed accommodations to be built just to the north: