By John Rhodes
Special to The Chatham Voice
I have a Facebook site which I call “Chatham History” on which people post photos and ask questions. One of our members recently asked about the building at the southeast corner of King and Fourth streets.
The member asked if that building was new or a refaced Rankin Hotel. No, it is not the Rankin Hotel, it is a new building, little more than 25 years old.
The Rankin Block was erected in the early 1850s by Col. Arthur Rankin of Windsor who was investing money in an attempt to win the federal political riding of West Kent. He lost.
The Rankin Block, initially, was a general-use business block, but in the mid 1860s it was converted to a hotel by Collin Rose who had been the publisher of the Kent Advertiser, which would evolve into the Chatham News.
There are some aspects to the photo regarding which I would like to comment.
The initial building was comprised of four floors which, in the days before elevators, were not common in Chatham as that fourth level was cumbersome and difficult to rent. Most King Street blocks were three floors; others, only two. A three-floor section was added in the 1880s to the south end of the structure.
In the lower left corner of the photo you can see two vehicles; that to the left is a horse-drawn street car operated by the Chatham Street Railway Company during the latter half of the 1880s. It connected the core area to the Erie and Huron Railway station near the junction of King Street East and Duke Street, and additionally connected the core area to the Grand Trunk Railway near the junction of William Street South and Queen Street.
It cost 5 cents to ride.
The second vehicle was a custom-built station bus operated by the Rankin Hotel. The Rankin Hotel and the Garner Hotel operated their own buses while the other hotels, lacking the resources, had to share buses. This particular bus had been built for the Rankin Hotel by the Wm Gray & Sons Carriage Company of Chatham.
At the corner of the building there is a substantial utility pole with a large number of insulators which, for the most part, were telegraph wires connecting core area ticket offices to the Grand Trunk Railway at Queen and William and the Michigan Central Railway at Charing Cross. The pole would also have carried primitive electricity and phone lines.
The Rankin Hotel survived until 1999 when it was destroyed by an arsonist.
