Mayor Charles J. MacGregor
1930s
Avon Crest today, 11 Avon Crest Dr.
* Further Reading: See Dean Robinson's For Your Health: Stratford General Hospital 1891-2002 (Stratford General Hospital, 2003).
Avon Crest hospital
In 1887, Stratford mayor Charles J. MacGregor proclaimed that a hospital was needed due to the number of industrial accidents in the city and area. A determined group of women responded and raised more than $7,000, enough to erect a building that could be expanded. So efficient was the raising of money through local fundraising ventures that the building was opened in 1891.
In the spring of 1889, a committee of local worthies chose London architect George F. Durand to draw up plans for Stratford’s first hospital. The prolific Durand had already designed the iconic Perth County Courthouse and the city’s pumphouse, which was later repurposed as the city's art gallery. The new hospital, on the southerly bank of the Avon River was one of his last designs.
The High Victorian Queen Anne Style, which cost a little more than $13,000 to build, opened to enthusiastic crowds in May 1891. Picturesquely set back from John Street on a curving drive, it was an imposing structure, symmetrical in plan with a central tower and wings boasting generous bay windows and turrets. High chimneys rose from its roof and crowning the tower was an iron weather vane.
The building’s siting and stylistic characteristics are reminiscent of the much larger legislative building at Queen’s Park in Toronto (completed in 1893). Over time, the hospital was enlarged with major rear additions, more functional than complimentary to the style of the original building.
Open-air porches, later closed in, were added on the southeast corner. Responding to postwar demands, by the late 1940s a new Stratford General Hospital was under construction across the street. It was linked to the original hospital with a pedestrian tunnel under John Street. The tunnel remains in service, but the original hospital was closed in 1950.
It remained standing, however, and n 1955 was repurposed as Avon Crest, a convalescent facility. That chapter in its history continued into the late 1980s when the last patients were moved out.
Fast forward to today, where the building, run down and about 65 per cent occupied, is home to a hodgepodge of hospital related offices, including the Stratford General Hospital Foundation, educational services and the wonderfully cluttered two-room hospital and nursing school archives.
The structure has lost many of its external details. Gone are the turrets and the chimneys, and the tower has been truncated. The building is practically surrounded by a huge parking lot and almost no one enters by the old front doors. Overall, the effect is rather shabby and forlorn.
But changes are afoot according to Andrew Williams, president and chief executive officer of the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance, which governs Stratford General and three other hospitals in Huron and Perth counties.
Will the almost 125-year-old Avon Crest building be preserved? The answer will depend on many things, including what might be made of the site, finances and the degree to which the community cares about the heritage of its first hospital. A Save Avon Crest campaign has been launched by members of the Stratford and District Historical Society, who say, "Demolishing a building that might instead be re-purposed and re-developed is irresponsible, both economically and environmentally."
Certainly, there are many examples in Stratford and elsewhere of the rejuvenation and repurposing of old, faded but still solid and handsome institutional structures, all of which have contributed to the growth of the community and have an important story to tell.
Click to see video : Stratford District Historical Society
Avon Crest demolished. November-December 2023. Photo Dean Robinson
Al Hamburg of Stratford documented the demolition as well. Sources: The photos and video can be found on If you grew up in Stratford...FB. (5) Facebook ;(5) Facebook
Avon Crest demolished 2023
Avon Crest is no more. Stratford's first hospital that had been built in 1889-1891 has fallen to the "wrecking ball" after 130 plus years of history and service. Demolition began in November 2023 and was completed early in 2024.
After a spirited campaign to keep Avon Crest intact by a local volunteer organization, the road to a new healthcare building on the site is physically underway. A 128-bed long-term care home is expected to be built and operated through a partnership between the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance and Revera Canada, though it is expected that it will take some time before shovels are in the ground for that new build. Source: Stratford Today, Nov.15, 2024.
1903 Mary Ballantyne Nurses Residence next to the city's first public hospital
The Mary Ballantyne Student Nurses Residence
It was in May 1891 that Stratford opened the doors to its first public general hospital. Within a year the hospital had hired a "lady superintendent" and with her the hospital's first two nursing students in training, Georgina Stevenson and Sadie Lauglin in training. Their graduation ceremony took place in a patient's room in 1893. The student nurses were in small numbers in the early years, and their accommodations were in small rooms on the top floor of the hospital. With an extended curriculum, the nurse training program went to three years, and by 1902 there were five applicants accepted for the available positions.
In 1903, a Downie Township cheesemaker and politician, Thomas Ballantyne (see Ballantyne Avenue) generously donated the Mary Ballantyne Nurses Residence in honour of his wife, who was a nurse. Located on the northeast lawn of hospital property, it was a stately white brick structure with verandas looking over the Old Grove and Avon River.
The same lawn became the site of the annual ceremony for the graduating nurses. In the accompanying photo, from 1908, there were three graduates, namely Jessie Munro, Pauline Thompson and Gertrude Young, all of them seated in the front row.
The Ballantyne residence served the student nurses until 1929, when increased enrolment signaled the need for a larger facility. The first residence continued to be a part of the hospital's service buildings until 1985, when it was quickly and unceremoniously leveled, and its footprint became a part of the parking lot for the original hospital, by then repurposed as the Rehabilitation and Extended Care Unit (RECU). Source: Text and pictures by Vince Gratton
1908 graduation ceremony, SGH nurses
1908 graduation day Mrs. Walls Findlay