The Journal · The Brantford Club
Historic Downtown Brantford: A Short Walk Through the Record
Historic downtown Brantford can be read on foot in an afternoon: the Bell Memorial that Walter Allward carved before Vimy, the Court House square, Colborne Street where the Kerby House once ran nearly a full block, and at the corner of George and Nelson Streets an Italianate house from around 1855 that still serves lunch as The Brantford Club.
Most cities keep their downtown history in plaques. Brantford kept an unusual amount of the real thing, and this Journal has spent months in the primary sources that document it. Here is the short walk, stop by stop, each one carrying a fact you can check against the record.
What is there to see in downtown Brantford?
Downtown Brantford rewards a walker with documents made of stone and brick. The Bell Memorial is the set piece: unveiled at noon on October 24, 1917 by the Duke of Devonshire with Dr. Bell himself present, its sculptor W. S. Allward chosen unanimously from nine models judged blind, before he went on to carve the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. The Court House keeps its square as it has since the city’s first surveys; Lewis Burwell’s 1830 plan already marked out the public squares, one of them now Victoria Park. And the streets themselves remember: Colborne for commerce, George for the professions, and the river below that named the whole place.
- The Bell Memorial
- Allward’s tribute to the telephone with no telephone in it: the annihilation of space, unveiled 1917
- The Court House square
- On the ground the 1830 Burwell survey laid out; the courts still sit where the plan put them
- Colborne Street
- The old main street of commerce, where the Kerby House hotel once extended nearly the full length of its block
- George and Nelson Streets
- An Italianate house built around 1855, older than the City itself, the home of The Brantford Club since 1898
- Victoria Park
- Marked as a public square on the 1830 survey and keeping the job ever since
The block that fed the city’s occasions
Colborne Street’s vanished landmark is worth the stop even though the building is gone. The Kerby House was, in F. D. Reville’s 1920 words, the hotel with “the most notable history” in the city: it lunched a Governor General in 1917 and hosted the 1898 organizing meeting where The Brantford Club elected its first President. The hotel has its own entry, and its story explains a rule of old downtowns: the addresses change, the occasions migrate, and the city keeps going to lunch.
The house that is still open
The walk ends at the corner of George and Nelson Streets, across from the Court House, at the one downtown landmark you can still be served in. The house went up around 1855, hosted Sir John A. Macdonald as a private guest in the Bown years, and has been The Brantford Club since 1898, with its rooms in daily use and its records, Charter, Minutes, and Visitors’ Register, intact. The house’s full biography is in the Journal; the short version is that downtown Brantford’s history is not entirely behind glass.
Most cities remember their downtown in plaques; Brantford kept a room of it open.
Questions the record answers
Is downtown Brantford walkable for history?
Comfortably. The Bell Memorial, the Court House square, Colborne Street, and the house at 98 George Street sit within an easy walk of one another, and each carries a documented story from the city’s own records.
What is the oldest thing to see downtown?
Among buildings still in use, the Italianate house at 98 George Street, built around 1855 per the City’s heritage record, predates the City of Brantford’s own 1877 incorporation.
What happened to the Kerby House?
Brantford’s great nineteenth-century hotel is gone from Colborne Street, but its record survives in F. D. Reville’s 1920 county history, and its role in the Club’s founding is kept in this Journal.
Sources: F. D. Reville, History of the County of Brant (1920), for the Bell Memorial, the Kerby House, and the Burwell survey of 1830; the City of Brantford’s heritage record for the house at 98 George Street; the Club’s centennial history for the founding dates.
If the walk ends with an appetite, directions to the one stop that serves lunch are on the visit page.
