By Joan Barfoot of the Free Press
It took 40 years for the founders of the London YMCA to get around to constructing the permanent headquarters in the city. On Sunday, it took just a few hours for their effort to be destroyed by fire.
The YMCA started in London in 1856 and the organization used temporary facilities around the city until the Wellington Street building that burned Sunday was built in 1895.
Growing pains and the war led to the first expansion in 1940, when the YMCA bought the old library next door, renovated and added to it, turning much of it into a 90-bed armed forces hospital. The first swimming pool was part of that effort.
In 1951, the YMCA and the YWCA amalgamated, and three years later built the Y complex’s last major addition, a five-storey residence for men and women, along with offices and meeting rooms.
A second, larger pool was built in 1962.
The last crisis at the Y before Sunday’s fire was a blast in March, 1979, that sent more than 100 residents fleeing into the street. That explosion blew off manhole covers in the street, twisted door frames and damaged concrete blocks, but no cause for the blast was made public.
The complex was soon back in full use.
Since then, the site was sold, with the purchasers planning to build an office complex with retail space and a possible hotel at the downtown location.
But that wasn’t supposed to happen for a couple of years, when the new YM-YWCA to cost at least $4.5 million was to be built at Waterloo and King streets.
The old site would then have been demolished. Sunday’s fire beat the wrecker’s hammer in turning the 1895 landmark into rubble.
