Niagara-on-the-Lake: The Old Historical Town

Virginia Gillham is Associate Librarian in the Public Service Library at
the University of Guelph.

Just as North American theatregoers associate Niagara-on-the-Lake with
George Bernard Shaw, so historians and lovers of architectural history
and restoration associate it with one of the most extensive examples of
historical restoration in North America. This book’s authors have
created a glossy, colorful compendium of this famous town’s
architecture, which will surely appeal to its many visitors.

One cannot help comparing this book to Peter Stokes’s Old Niagara on
the Lake. The similarities in intent and format are striking, and the
overlap in coverage is more than 50 percent. The reader may then wonder
why Stokes—the guiding architect behind a significant number of the
local restorations—is dismissed in less than a sentence, and why a
volume such as this, which offers historical summaries of the town and
of many of its buildings, provides no bibliography or list of
references.

Both books begin with a few pages summarizing the town’s history and
evolution, beginning at the time of the American Revolution. Both then
offer individual pictures and written descriptions of many of the
town’s more interesting buildings. The Stokes book presents sketches
depicting the buildings in their original form, limits its contents to
historical buildings, and uses (and explains) a system of multi-name
nomenclature that highlights the ownership history of each home; the
Mika book uses color photographs of the current iterations of the homes
and buildings, and includes some significant modern structures, such as
the Shaw Festival Theatre. The frustrating inconsistency in the new
volume’s nomenclature renders its index less useful than it might be.
Some homes are identified with a single name, apparently of the earliest
significant owner who can be identified; others are identified by
address, although in those cases the owners’ names are often included
in the descriptive text. This approach is not explained.

Stokes’s book is out of print, and the colorful, popular treatment of
the Mika volume will undoubtedly appeal to the region’s many visitors.
Still, a more scholarly approach to its supporting information would
have broadened its appeal and usefulness.