Kingston & Pembroke's Original Enginehouse

Its request refused to build on Fort Frontenac lands, the Kingston & Pembroke (K&P) instead settled on Place d’Armes in 1873. Its principal address was listed as Place d’Armes in 1885. The original station of the K&P in Kingston was built there. It later became the office building for the Frontenac Lumber & Coal Company. A spur was later laid here to serve the Montreal Transportation Company grain elevator. A small two-stall engine shed and turntable was nearby, in use between 1877 and 1883. 

Andrew Jeanes recently shared an excellent analysis of the above photo, made from a glass negative in the Queen's University Archives Vosper Collection. It shows one of my favourite parts of Kingston's industrial waterfront and its trackage. The photo may have been taken from a building on the east side of Barrack Street.

Andrew writes:

The photo shows the lumber yard of the Rathbun Company and the coal yard of the James Sowards Coal & Wood Co. at Place d’Armes and Ontario Street in downtown Kingston. 

Boxcar No. 444 belonged to the National Despatch Line, a private car operator that existed between 1869 and 1914. According to the June 1890 and June 1895 Official Railway Equipment Registers, National Despatch boxcars nos. 400-999 were all assigned to the Grand Trunk Railway, along with about 495 other boxcars in several number series.

James Sowards began conducting a coal and lumber business at the corner of Place d’Armes and Ontario Street in 1889, and the Rathbun Company moved its operations there from the foot of Queen Street in 1893. By 1907, the Frontenac Coal & Lumber Co. had taken over the Rathbun operation, so the photo must date from sometime between 1893 and 1906.

What’s really interesting to me is the building behind the boxcar with the large Rathbun Company sign and smaller Sowards sign on the roof. This was the original Kingston & Pembroke Railway enginehouse, built in November 1877. It was reported in the Whig as 70x53 feet, of frame construction, covered in iron and having a fire-proof roof. There was a turntable in front of this engine house from 1877 to 1883. In the 1908 fire insurance plan the building is labelled iron-clad “storage, cement salt etc."

In 1883 the K&P relocated to its new roundhouse at the foot of North Street, which was still there in the late 1970s. The old turntable at Place d’Armes was removed and the former enginehouse was leased for commercial purposes. The building survived until January 1920, when it was torn down along with a number of other buildings on the property. Today, this site is covered by the reconfigured intersection of Place d’Armes and Ontario Street and a portion of the Frontenac Village condo development.

An aerial view, circa 1915, shows the original K&P station and its engine house at opposite ends of the green line.

The buildings were located at the bottom left of this map:

A 1908 fire insurance map shows the station and engine house along Ontario Street:

Frontenac Lumber and Coal Company circa 1915 (below) Ontario Street at Place d Armes. Earlier, this was the first K&P station (Queen's University Archives, Kingston Picture Collection).