The Journal · The Brantford Club

Historic Things to Do in Brantford: The Places You Can Walk Into

Brantford’s historic sites open to visitors include the Bell Homestead at 94 Tutela Heights Road, where the telephone was conceived in 1874; His Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks at 301 Mohawk Street, built in 1785; the Bell Memorial in the city centre, unveiled in 1917; and the Sanderson Centre at 88 Dalhousie Street, downtown since 1919.

Brantford is an easy city to read badly. The lists rank it by what is quickest to photograph, and the record it actually keeps sits inside buildings people drive past. This entry is a register of the historic places in Brantford you can go into, with the address, the date, and what the building is for now. It is kept from inside one of them, the c. 1855 house at 98 George Street that has held The Brantford Club since 1898, which means two things: the Club knows what a working heritage building costs to keep, and it will say plainly which doors on this list open to the public and which do not.

What historic places can you visit in Brantford?

Four sites carry the city’s history and admit visitors on their own published terms. Each keeps its own hours, and hours move with the season, so the register below gives the address and the authority to check rather than a schedule that will be wrong by the time you read it.

The Bell Homestead at Tutela Heights

The Bell Homestead is the one Brantford site with a claim the whole world checks. Melville House, at 94 Tutela Heights Road above the Grand River, was the first North American home of the Bell family, and it was there in July 1874 that Alexander Graham Bell worked out the idea he later described in his own words: the telephone was conceived in Brantford in 1874 and born in Boston in 1875. Canada designated it a National Historic Site in 1996, and the City of Brantford runs it as a museum restored to its 1870s appearance. The Journal keeps a fuller entry on the house where the telephone was conceived, and the City of Brantford’s own Homestead page is the current source for hours and admission.

His Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks

The oldest building on this register is also the one whose story belongs to someone else to tell. His Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks stands at 301 Mohawk Street, built in 1785. By its own account it is the first Protestant church in Upper Canada and the oldest surviving church in Ontario, the oldest Royal Chapel in Canada, and the only Royal Chapel outside Great Britain to hold its own Royal Arms. It is a Mohawk institution on Six Nations territory, it welcomes visitors, and it offers guided tours and programmes for schools and groups. The Journal lists it here because no honest register of historic Brantford omits the oldest church in the province, and then stops: the Chapel’s own site and guides are the authority on what it means and how to visit, and this house does not narrate another’s record for it.

The Bell Memorial and the Sculptor of Vimy

The Bell Memorial is the piece of Brantford most people have stood in front of without knowing what they were looking at. It was unveiled on October 24, 1917 by the Governor General, the Duke of Devonshire, with Bell himself present, and the sculptor was Walter Allward, who went on to carve the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France. That sequence is the detail worth carrying: the man who made Brantford’s monument to an invention went on to make the country’s monument to its dead. It sits on open ground, costs nothing, and asks no hours of you. The Journal’s entry on the memorial carries the unveiling in more detail.

The Sanderson Centre on Dalhousie Street

The Sanderson Centre for the Performing Arts has been, in its own words, a feature in Brantford’s downtown since 1919, and it stands at 88 Dalhousie Street. It is the one building on this register you enter by buying a ticket to something, which is the most honest way a theatre survives a century. A city that lost Cockshutt Plow in 1962 and watched Massey-Harris pass into the history books kept its downtown theatre running, and the Centre’s own listings are where the current season lives.

The Houses Still in Daily Use

The last entries on the register are the buildings that never became museums, and Brantford has more of them than its visitor lists suggest. The Brantford Club is one: an Italianate house at 98 George Street, built around 1855, older than the City of Brantford itself, which was incorporated in 1877. It has been a private members’ club since it opened on December 31, 1898, and it is not a site you can tour. The doors open for members, for their guests, and for the people who host events in the rooms. That distinction is worth keeping straight on a page like this, because a working building is a different proposition from a restored one: nothing here is behind rope, and everything here is still in use. The house’s own account is on the history page, and hosts who want to see the rooms properly can read what an evening involves on the booking page.

Four of these buildings keep their history for visitors; one keeps setting the tables.

Planning a Heritage Day in Brantford

The geography sorts the day for you. The Bell Homestead sits south of the centre on Tutela Heights, the Chapel is east on Mohawk Street, and the Memorial, the Sanderson Centre, and the George Street house are all in or beside the downtown core, close enough to cover on foot. Check hours with each site directly before setting out, since three of the five keep seasonal schedules. Visitors coming from Paris, St. George, Cambridge, Ancaster, or Burlington are inside a comfortable drive. For the downtown portion specifically, the Journal keeps a short walk through the record, and the broader question of what Brantford is known for has its own entry.

Questions visitors ask about historic Brantford

Sources: the City of Brantford’s Bell Homestead record; His Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, on its own authority; the Sanderson Centre’s own account of its downtown century; the Dictionary of Canadian Biography for Bell in his own words; and the City’s heritage record for the house at 98 George Street.