Satnam Grewal Law

The neighbourhood

The office is at 53 Roy Street in Kitchener, in a house called Maplecroft that dates to about 1908. It was built for T.A. Witzel, who ran the Onward Manufacturing Company, a maker of furniture sliders. Its large street-facing gable and two-storey bay are an early expression of Tudor Revival, and beside the arched doorway, on its left, the stone cap bears the carved name Maplecroft.

Roy Street opened in the 1890s, and its name probably honours a local landowner who kept greenhouses near Queen and Ellen Streets in the 1880s. It sits in the Civic Centre neighbourhood, one of Kitchener's four heritage conservation districts, an area linked to several key periods in the city's growth and home to many buildings associated with community leaders. Many of the neighbourhood's building conversions have been done with care for the original heritage character, and the City's heritage plan places 53 Roy Street among its more preferred examples. As the years passed, downtown Kitchener developed around Roy Street into a civic precinct of churches, the county courthouse and the central library, with local government offices arriving later.