The chair of Doors Open Hamilton hopes the 2023 edition of the event will spur on the preservation of several historic Hamilton buildings still in “good shape” and “perfect for restoration.”
Committee member Shannon Kyles suggests businesses and organizations stepping up recently to save old buildings they reside in have preserved neighbourhoods and communities the exploration group will earmark in future affairs.
“Large malls are fantastic, but you want to have those little strips of old places that are all sort of thriving in the middle of a city, don’t you?” Kyles told 900 CHML’s Good Morning Hamilton.
Some 38 local buildings and seven guided tours are on tap for the latest Doors Open event, led by local historians Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.
Private entrepreneurs who’ve put their own time, effort and money into restorations and opened as restaurants, grocery stores and other food-related entities are of particular focus for the May agenda.
Brewers Blackbird Kitchen and Brewery in Ancaster (Rousseau House), Collective Arts Brewery on Burlington Street and the Dundas Eateries Tour are just a small sample of some destinations on the weekend tour schedule.
Picone’s Food Market is one of Kyles’ favourites on the Dundas tour, revealing it still operates in the same location today, 34 King St. W., as it did when it opened in 1915.
“It’s got the most incredible food and they’ve redone the storefront,” she said.
“A lot of the older places are redoing their storefronts back to what the Victorians would have had it looking like. It’s just an incredible shop.”
Kyles also singled out the Fieldcote Memorial Park & Museum, built 1948, as well as Green Venture’s Ecohouse and Erland Lee Home from the 1800s as examples of well-preserved structures in the spotlight this weekend.
“Seeing some of the old museums like Fieldcote or Erland Lee, these are old houses that people used to actually live in and they’re still intact and … still in their beautiful surroundings,” Kyles said.
“Also in Green Venture’s, if you’re sowing your garden this year, they have all the information that you might need … in an old 1800s Georgian building.”
Admission fees for most venues on the Doors Open list will be waived, including free entry to Dundurn Castle and other civic museums.
The Ontario-wide event will host similar gatherings in Oshawa, Richmond Hill and Toronto for May.