1912 - Locke Street South

By June 1912, business owners and residents along or in the near vicinity of Hamilton’s Locke street south had had enough.

        Between Herkimer and Main streets, Locke street south had become a reasonably successful area comprising many small businesses, several churches and nearby schools and growing residential areas. The Hamilton Street Railway ran a busy street car line along the street.

        But the City of Hamilton’s politicians and administrators had not paid much attention to how much Locke Street had advanced in recent years.

        A prime example of that change was the Twentieth Century Club building on the west side of Locke Street, between Blanchard and Hill street.

Built just seven years previously, in 1905, the Twentieth Century Club’s building had retail space available on the first floor, while the second floor, with its large windows, was mainly an open area, suitable for large meetings of the club itself or by any other organization which might want to rent it.

It was this very building itself that was used for a meeting on June 6, 1912 at which it was decided to address the city’s neglect of Locke street by an organization to be call the South-West Hamilton Improvement Society.

It was argued at the meeting that it was time for citizens in the Locke street area, whether business owners or residents, to organize and pressure the local municipal officials to act. As reported in the Hamilton Spectator, the meeting included “wholesale complaints of neglect by the city.”

It was stated that Locke Street South was in “terrible shape.” Speakers noted that the street car tracks was so “rickety that, when the cars are traveled fast, passengers are jolted around until they get a feeling that one seldom experiences except on a boat in a choppy sea.”

The organization was duly put in place, with plans to meet again to elect officers, agree upon a charter and devise a plan of action to ensure that Locke Street South would no longer be so shamefully neglected.

Any politician wishing to run for office from the ward would be sure to hear from the improvement society again and again until something was done to improve conditions on Locke street.