Our old photo this week shows a wintertime view of the home of Dr. Thomas Clark, one of the few private homes located among the otherwise commercial buildings that have long dominated St. Paul Street.
Clark’s house was likely built around 1860 and stood on the north side of St. Paul, just east of Garden Park. It was both the residence and office of Clark.
For a time in the 1860s, Clark shared the office space there with Dr. Theophilus Mack and his brother, Dr. Francis L.
Mack. However, the Macks soon moved on after Theophilus became involved in establishing the Springbank spa hotel/sanatorium (1864) and the General Hospital (1865). Clark continued to practise and reside there on St.
Paul Street for another four decades. After his death and the residence of another physician there, the building was finally subdivided into apartments. In about 1912, it was purchased by Thomas Nihan.
Nihan was a prominent local businessman, successful in farming and as a canal and railway contractor and, for a time, owner of the NS&T street railway. He was also active in local politics, first as the reeve of Grantham Township and later as a member of St. Catharines city council.
On a couple of occasions, he also ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor. In about 1918, Nihan replaced Clark’s former home and office with a fine new commercial building designed by architect A.E.
Nicholson, best known at that time for his work on the Yates Street mansion he had done a few years earlier for Col. Reuben L. Leonard.
Nicholson later partnered with Robert A. Macbeth to produce much admired homes on Yates Street and in Old Glenridge, along with such institutions as the Queen Street “Y” and the Glenridge School. The corner of Garden Park and St.
Paul Street in St. Catharines is now home to Mahtay Café & Lounge. Nihan’s handsome new St.
Paul Street office building was three storeys tall, built of brick, with carved limestone details. Among these was “NIHAN BUILDING” carved into a limestone slab atop the building’s façade, and limestone inserts on the building’s corners, shaped like a shields and bearing owner Nihan’s “TN” initials. After Nihan died in 1924, his estate eventually sold the Nihan Building to the Batcules family, which already, since 1918, had owned the building next door, where they operated the Victoria Candy Kitchen.
Renting out most of the rest of the building, the Batcules within a few years opened up a five and dime store on the first floor, at the St. Paul-Garden Park corner — the Victoria Department Store. The Batcules operated their department store there until 1966.
Visible today on the front of the building at Garden Park and St. Paul Street in St. Catharines, now home to the Mahtay Café, is “NIHAN BUILDING” carved into a limestone slab atop the building’s façade.
Many readers will remember the Nihan building in a somewhat glitzier form. Sometime in the 1970s, the building was given a facelift, intended to modernize it by covering the building’s upper floors, from the top of its plate glass windows to the roof, with a shiny new metal grill façade. The building continued to show that face to the world until about 2006, when its modern cladding was removed, and the handsome original Nihan building was revealed once more.
For the past 15 years, the building has been the home of the popular Mahtay Café & Lounge..
