Mettawas End  -  Bed and Breakfast

     The Mettawas resort on Park Street was the place to be for late nineteenth century revelers.

    The  railway station nearby,now restored, was  a hub for patrons coming from the Windsor and Detroit areas. 

   Steamboats brought American tourists from Cleveland, Toledo and Chicago.

    The indian name Mettawas - meaning "confluence of waters" - was given to the Grand Hotel and  complex by the Detroit industrialist Hiram Walker who chose for his 375 ft long building the Queen Anne Revival style.

 Architect drawing for the Mettawas 

Dancing under the stars, a casino, beaches, seven acres of lawn to play lacrosse and cricket provided enjoyment to many.

Original Mettawas creamer and sugar bowl

     Possibly unprofitable or carrying too heavy a tax burden, the Resort was closed and torn down in 1904.

   Since then several attempts to renew interest for tourists in this nice location have been made. A Mettawas Inn opened in 1914 and tried to keep entertainment, tennis and dancing up until this revival failed 10 years later.

     Beginning  in the thirties, a large open air dancing pavillion was popular for many years as some current Kingsville residents still remember.

      Then Lakeshore Terrace Hotel became a well known location for weddings, anniversaries and chartered tourist buses

    Burnt down in 2000 after several years as an abandoned building, it leaves an empty lot awaiting revival.

    In the area the memory of all the grand old parties and revelries attached to the "mettawas" name still remains. 

  In this spirit, we named our house:  Mettawas End.

The future Mettawas End Bed and breakfast by a local artist 30 years ago :

  In 1891, across the street from the Mettawas Resort and Casino, this summer cottage - in fact a 3800 sq.ft frame house - was built for Franklin H. Walker. It was supposed to be the prototype of other cottages - to host a fast growing number of wealthy patrons attracted by the Mettawas Resort. 

It was bought by my great-grandfather Henry Gordon Laidlaw in 1907 and remained in my family up until World War II.

On this baby picture my mother is held in her grandmothers' arms, in her first summer of many at the Kingsville house.

In the late twenties here she is again, across the street, a young girl almost ready for a swim. .

Sold to the Ford family during World War II it came back into my family when my mother bought it back for her retirement .

It became again a family gathering place.

And a comfortable house to live in.

Here is the wrap around porch corner :