Welcome!

This walking tour is about 1.5 km and will begin at Grantham Academy and end at Montebello Park Pavilion and Bandstand which will take approximately 30 minutes to complete.

This tour will highlight some of the architecturally significant sites in downtown St. Catharines and will allow you to discover the history and culture behind the development of the downtown area through decades and even centuries of growth. The sites we will visit on this tour are considered historically important because they represent a period when the city was culturally different and becoming more industrialized by the development of the Welland Canal. Therefore, this tour will feature some of the important details and characteristics of each site to help create a sense of place through cultural links and the historical interpretation of architectural designs in downtown St. Catharines.

On this tour, we will visit the following sites:

Grantham Academy

St. Catherine of Alexandria Cathedral

Former Grantham Town Hall

The Old Courthouse

Montebello Park Pavillion and Bandstand

The purpose of this tour is to strengthen ties to local heritage by spotlighting a variety of sites that may not have been viewed as culturally important. The sites featured on this tour represent places that were once considered significant to the community in the past, but no longer hold the same value today. Hopefully by the end of this tour you will make valuable discoveries and connections to these otherwise little-known points of interests.