Start at Brock and Spruce with a photograph of the post office that once stood there. Follow eight stops to the Music Hall. Along the way, stand where the Uxbridge Journal went to press and see the photograph of an entire hotel being moved down Brock Street.
Old post office site · Brock Street West & Spruce Street
Face the northeast corner of Brock and Spruce. The shops you see now occupy the site of William Henry’s department store, which burned in 1902. A 1914 photograph catches its successor, the post office, still under construction. Open the 1968 Santa Claus parade photo and look above the spectators. By then the post office had a taller clock tower. The building came down in 1971.
Uxbridge Railway Station · 19 Railway Street
Look at the pointed roof on the south end of the station. Beneath it was a circular waiting room. The first passengers arriving in 1871 knew a much plainer wooden building. Grand Trunk replaced it in 1904 with the station you see today. The postcard below gives you a passenger’s-eye view of the platform six years later.
Uxbridge Journal office · 86 Brock Street West
Stand at Brock and Church and compare the corner building with the Historical Centre’s photograph of the newspaper office. The first issue of the Uxbridge Journal came off the press here in June 1869. One of its foremen, William Pemberton, went on to start a rival paper, the Uxbridge Guardian. By 1887, readers in a town of about 2,000 had three local papers to choose from.
Roxy Theatre · 46 Brock Street West
Stand back far enough to read the Roxy marquee, then open the old photograph of Davie Pharmacy. It’s the same building. It opened as the Rio Theatre in 1949 and took the Roxy name in 1951. After the cinema closed in the 1970s, townspeople came here to fill prescriptions. Cathy and Mark Christoff brought the movies back on December 13, 1996.
Public Library & Market Hall site · 9 Toronto Street South
At Brock and Toronto, look up at the old library’s brick clock tower. The clay for the bricks came from Joseph Gould’s farm on Mill Street. Gould died after approving the plans, so his sons saw the project through. When the doors opened in December 1887, the shelves held more than 5,000 books. Now look across Brock to the northeast corner. An old photograph shows the Market Hall there, with shops below and a room upstairs where town council met.
David Milne’s studio window · Brock Street West & Bascom Street
Look up on the south side of Brock at Bascom. The broad upstairs window, now partly filled with brick, once lit a room used for banquets above a bakery. In the 1940s it became David Milne’s studio. His colour print Main Street shows Brock Street from up there. In the early 1950s, Toronto Star cartoonist Duncan Macpherson worked at the same window.
Former Commercial Hotel · 37 Main Street North
From the Main Street sidewalk, compare the building in front of you with Al Dunlop’s photograph of it travelling down Brock Street. Built in 1868 near First Avenue, the Commercial Hotel later served as a livery stable. When demolition threatened in 1981, movers lifted the whole building and brought it here. You may remember it by a later name, the Hobby Horse Arms.
Uxbridge Music Hall · 16 Main Street South
Finish outside the Music Hall, built in 1901 after a fire destroyed the earlier Ontario Hall. Find the cornerstone to the right of the front door and look at the bricks just above it. While those bricks were still soft in Greenbank, a cat stepped on them. The pawprints survived firing and made it into the theatre wall. Look up from there for Uxbridge’s coat of arms.