Alexandra Hall opened its doors to young woman lodgers on June 18, 1912. The photo on the left presumably shows residents and staff on a small porch on the north side of the building. On the right is a photo of the building as seen in autumn 2016. (Photos courtesy Dennis Gannon / St. Catharines Standard (used with permission).

A new YMCA building that opened on St. Paul Street in 1906 included lodging for boys who were strangers to the city, but there was no provision in the city for girls in similar situations. Local advocates for women, disappointed at that and concerned about the physical safety and moral well-being of young women who came to this city, undertook to remedy the situation.

By 1911 a fundraising campaign had begun to purchase a house somewhere in a central location where young women could live while they worked here. The project was spearheaded by local members of the WCTU — the Women's Christian Temperance Union, a group founded to fight the evils of excess consumption of alcohol, but with wider concerns about the welfare of women.The leaders of the campaign eventually purchased a distinguished old vacant property, the Mittleberger house, located on Ontario Street just north of King -— a home built in 1852 by local merchant and office holder J. F. Mittleberger, and later the residence of Henry Taylor, son of a founder of the Taylor & Bate brewery.

That house, named by them Alexandra Hall (likely in honour of Alexandra, widow of the late King Edward VII), opened its doors to young woman lodgers on June 18, 1912. The photo above presumably shows residents and staff on a small porch on the north side of the building.

There clearly was a need for such housing. Within months of its opening the sponsors of Alexandra Hall were out raising more funds, and in 1914 12 more rooms were added to the residence. Eventually the home accommodated 32 residents. In the 1940s the girls were paying $15 a week for their lodgings. By the 1970s the need for housing for single women seems to have been met in other ways, and in 1977 Alexandra Hall closed.

Since then the building, when not standing vacant, has been the home of a series of local business — real estate offices and the like.

One final note — in the old days there was a wooden sign saying "ALEXANDRA HALL" which hung over the building's front entrance. You can still see that sign today, not there on Ontario Street but rather on Glenridge Avenue — it hangs over a doorway inside the Cat's Caboose restaurant, with the other historical memorabilia that decorate the walls there.

Text courtesy Dennis Gannon / St. Catharines Standard (used with permission)

Cook, Sharon Anne. 1998. Sharon Anne Cook, "PHELPS, LILLIAN MARIETTA," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 30, 2018, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/phelps_lillian_marietta_14E.html

Gannon, Dennis. 2016. Yesterday and Today - Mittelberger House / Alexandra House. St. Catharines Standard / Niagara Falls Review. https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news-story/8186791-yesterday-and-today-alexandra-hall/

Leonard, Meredith. 2016. Lillian Phelps: St. Catharines' own suffragette. Museum Chat - St. Catharines Museum (October 3, 2016). https://stcatharinesmuseumblog.com/2016/10/03/lillian-phelps-st-catharines-own-suffragette/

Narration: Barbary Worthy

Music - Excerpts from:

"English Suite - Andante (Polly Oliver)". Matt Soble. Electic Records.(http://www.angelfire.com/indie/eclecticrecords/Sob...). Used with permission of the artists.

Haydn: Variations on "Gott ehrhalte" - Gary Cooper (fortepiano). Collins Classics CCS SA26509, Tr 3.

"In Your Arms" - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/