With thanks to Kimberly O’Sullivan, archivist, for researching this and providing the information below.
According to census records, Robert Hartley Little senior lived at 487 King Street between 1933 – 1959 with his father, George, and 3 of his children, including Sue Perry’s grandfather, Robert Hartley Little junior.
These days, 487 is a very narrow and incomplete extension wedged between two commercial addresses. Hard to imagine anyone living in it. So what’s its story?
From the funeral notice below, 487 King street was an “address” in 1931, and a man called Hugh Cassidy lived there.
However, by 1933 the Littles were living there. But what exactly was “there”.
The first photo Kimberly could find that showed there was something at 487 King street is from June 1936. The photo below shows a structure set back from the road next to a hotel called Hotel Victory.
Given the width of the gap at 487 (as can be seen from the top photo), the structure can’t have been more than a car width wide. And it housed 5 adults.
A second photo, from 1949, shows 487 King Street from a different angle, and it appears to have been an alleyway.
Perhaps the most telling photo of what 487 King street may have looked like is the one below, taken in 1983.
By that year, 487 was a vacant lot. However, there appears to have been a single storey structure at the back of the Victory Hotel next door.
Could that have been where the family of 5 Littles lived for many years?
Was 487 King street simply an alleyway to a small one storey cottage at the back of the hotel (as seen in the photo below), probably owned by the hotel and leased out. Not good for the members of the Little family with drinking problems!
Or, it could have been a separate building we cant see and in the yard of the hotel. It could’ve even been a former hotel shed or stable which had been converted.
When Hugh Cassidy dies it is the middle of the Great Depression and the housing situation was dire, so many people were living wherever they could.
From Hugh Cassidy’s death notice, 487 was a stand alone address from at least 1931.
