A few views of the same part of Belleville

I wrote yesterday about figuring out the viewpoint/direction of one postcard by looking at another. To do so I went through a bunch of old cards of Belleville. Interesting to see how many come from similar viewpoint. the most recent one could be aerial but wonder if the others done from the top of the city hall clock tower?
The first one shows the lower (Bridge Street) bridge shown in the postcard I posted earlier, the last two show the current arched bridge.

Solving a postcard mystery with another postcard

I have a few old postcards of Belleville, Ontario (and other places). For most of them, it is easy to figure out what area they cover, there are obvious and persistent landmarks that I can pick up. Sometimes I am confused.

One postcard that confused me for a while was called Birds Eye View, Looking Down the bay, Belleville. I thought this must be looking south, towards the Bay (of Quinte). But I could not place it. One building that seemed very distinct was the reddish one with curved window tops in the lower right. It made me think of Belleville's gothic City Hall but, the City Hall has a tower on the street side.

Then I looked at another postcard, Front Street and the Moira River. This one is clearly taken looking north past the intersection of Front  and Bridge streets. And I saw the same building on the right side of the picture. So, now I know the first shot was taken looking away from the Bay, up Front Street towards the north.

Two things I am curious about about Belleville, Ontario

Two things I wonder about related to Belleville, Ontario...there are a lot more of them....

anybody got any ideas about:

The Trillium 2000 Senior Citizens Centre is on St. Paul Street. It used to be a store called the Houston Company. I remember it as a hardware place. Somebody told me it used to be a train station. Now, that makes less sense to me. I know the train station in Belleville (VIA ex CN) and I remember the CPR (ex joint station with Canadian Northern) station (see picture below from Library and Archives Canada) and I know there was a station on Pinnacle Street but I cannot imagine that this place was a station. Does anyone know anything this or even anything about the Houston Company (something tells me it had a different spelling..Huston?).
2009 December 28th: It was the Houston Company.

The second thing is that I have a memory of a cemetery in the East part of Belleville. Somewhere around Pine Street / MacDonald Avenue, not a big place, just a small graveyard. Have never been able to find when I looked and could not find any record of it being moved. There was no church nearby which seems odd for an old cemetery.
2009 December 28th:  Reading a history of Belleville written in 1943 by Mikel. The author mentions a Catholic cemetery near the Grand Trunk (CN) station that operated until 1904. I wonder when the tombstones were removed from it?

A haunted place?

During my first years at public school, much of the school yard was not fenced. There were interesting things off one corner, in particular the Old Folks Home. I mean the Old Old Folks Home because the residents had long since moved to Hastings Manor on the other side of town. What was left was a derelict building with a caretaker who would chase students away when they went close to explore. The building looked fascinating, all kinds of nooks and crannies (not that I ever had the guts to go in). I took a picture of it in 66, when I was in high school but it looked as inviting as when I was younger. Not sure how much longer it lasted.

In 1992 I was visiting someone in the hospital and she had another visitor who turned out to be the son of the man who used to run the Old Folks Home. He gave me a post card showing the building in all of its glory. Half of me thinks he was the man who chased the kids away but not sure.

Hastings Manor itself is now gone, replaced by a much fancier facility in the same location.

I called this posting a haunted place because somebody said that she would take me to a haunted building some day and this is the one that came to my mind but I don't think that any of us thought it was haunted, we just knew there was someone there who would chase us away if we went near it.