Roundhouse Centre

The Roundhouse Center is a shopping plaza located across the street from Devonshire Mall in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

The plaza has a number of shops including a Toys R Us, White Rose Home & Garden Centre, Penningtons women's plus size clothing store, a McDonalds, an Outback Steakhouse, HSBC Bank Canada bank and office (formerly a Krispy Kreme), a LCBO, Future Shop, American Express Travel Service, Cameron's Christian Bookstore, Dufferin Games, Everything for a Dollar Store, Lenscrafters, Labels, Blinds to Go and Henry's Camera shop. The plaza's address is 3039 Howard Avenue.

History

Until the 1920s, this plaza was used as a train station, turnaround, and roundhouse for locomotives. When CN decided to move to a more centralized and downtown location (now the VIA Rail station located at modern-day Walker Road and Riverside Drive, next to the Canadian Club and Hiram Walker Distillery), they sold the Roundhouse Centre to local businesses, who turned it into a shopping plaza.

CN owns (and uses) both the VIA Rail line and the Van De Water rail yard and rail line that travels behind the Roundhouse Centre to this day, however.

This plaza was never a train station. The roundhouse serviced the Michigan Central Railroad, then New York Central Railroad then Penn Central and finally the Canadian National Railway. It included a bunkhouse for out-of-town train crews. The CN train station was downtown at the foot of Goyeau until a new station was constructed at Walker Road in 1965.

See also

* Devonshire Mall, a large shopping mall located across the street.

Related links

* [http://checkercabco.biz/bottom/shopping.html Roundhouse Centre at Checkercabco.biz, Windsor's Checker Cab taxi company]
* [http://devonshire.shopping.ca/cambridge/jsp/index_flash.jsp?mallid=dev Devonshire Mall]