Tag: Teeple Terrace collapse

Here’s a question you probably haven’t asked lately: Who makes sure your hotel’s second floor won’t cave in?

If you’re visiting London, Ontario, you might spend an afternoon admiring our Victorian brick architecture, grabbing coffee in a converted warehouse, or climbing a creaky staircase to a quirky local shop. And you’ll never once worry about the floor giving way beneath you.

That peace of mind came at a cost. A steep one.

For nearly two decades around the turn of the 20th century, London was a city that learned things the hard way, by collapsing, burning, and burying its own citizens in rubble. Again and again, tragedy struck. And again and again, the city shrugged.

Until finally, London did what it should have done years earlier: it hired its first professional building inspector.

This is the story of what it took to make that happen.

The Problem: A Boomtown With No Brakes

In the 1880s and 1890s, London was growing fast. Railroads, factories, and warehouses were springing up overnight. The Ontario Building Code wouldn’t arrive until 1975, so each city made its own rules.

London’s rules were polite suggestions (at best).  

Landlords renovated without permits. Contractors removed load-bearing walls because they wanted a better view. And the city’s “inspection” system, such as it was, amounted to little more than a part-time alderman squinting at a beam and saying, “Probably fine.”

They were wrong.

Terribly wrong.

City Hall Collapses (1898)

On the evening of January 3, 1898, London’s old City Hall was packed.

Hundreds of citizens had gathered on the second floor to celebrate Mayor-elect Dr. John Wilson. The mood was joyful, loud, and boisterous. People cheered, stamped their feet, and jumped up and down.

Then came the crack.

A massive wooden support beam snapped. The entire second floor buckled and dropped twenty feet into the city engineer’s office below (how ironic). And then, for good measure, a 500-pound safe and a heavy steam radiator crashed down on top of the fallen crowd.

Twenty-three Londoners died. One hundred and fifty were injured.

A vacant store next door became a makeshift hospital. Queen Victoria herself sent condolences from England.

Surely, surely, this collapse would force change.

It did not.

Among the dead was a local shoemaker named John Burridge. Seventeen years earlier, Burridge had miraculously survived the sinking of the SS Victoria on the Thames River, a disaster that claimed nearly two hundred lives. He beat the odds once.

However, on that cold January night in 1898, his luck ran out.

An investigation revealed that Mayor John Little himself had removed a supporting wall on the first floor during renovations years earlier, ignoring the city’s own first (and very weak) building bylaw passed in 1893. The tragedy was entirely preventable. And yet, in the aftermath, London did almost nothing to enforce its rules.

Old habits die hard.

Sterling Brothers Fire (1904)

Six years later, another disaster struck.

On January 6, 1904, a major fire broke out at the Sterling Brothers shoe factory on York Street. Fire Chief John A. Roe, a 24-year veteran and one of the most respected men in the city, was directing his crew when a weakened exterior wall collapsed without warning.

Chief Roe was crushed and killed instantly. Four other firefighters were seriously injured.

It was one of the darkest days in London’s fire history. Today, Fire Station No. 3 on Commissioners Road West bears his name. But at the time, the tragedy raised an uncomfortable question: Why are our buildings killing the very people who run toward danger to save us?

The answer, again, was the same: no proper inspections, no oversight of structural work during renovations, and no one with the authority to say “stop.”

Still, the city did not hire a dedicated building inspector.

Reid’s Crystal Hall Collapses (1907)

It took one more disaster, and it was, in many ways, the most avoidable of all.

On July 16, 1907, a three-storey brick building on Dundas Street (just west of Clarence) called Reid’s Crystal Hall was undergoing renovations. The owner wanted to turn the upper floors into a bowling alley and pool hall. Workers cut windows into the east wall and began removing a centre section, without temporary supports.

The building’s owner and contractor objected. The leaseholder pushed ahead anyway, promising that iron pillars would be installed “soon.”

They weren’t.

The east wall, already weakened by a fire back in 1882, gave way. Tons of brick and timber crashed onto the sidewalk, the street, and the building next door.

Eight people died. Forty were injured.

The tragedy made headlines around the world. And this time, Londoners had had enough. You can only watch your neighbours die under bricks so many times before you demand change.

The First Building Inspectors

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no parade, no monument. But in the years immediately following the Crystal Hall collapse, the City of London quietly did something it should have done years earlier: it began hiring dedicated building inspectors with real authority.

These weren’t part-time politicians or friendly local carpenters. They were the first professional eyes in London whose job was to check floor loads, inspect beam connections, review renovation plans, and, most importantly, say no when something was unsafe.

For the first time, London had people in place whose entire mission was to make sure that an election night celebration or a bowling alley conversion wouldn’t turn into a mass casualty event.

That early patchwork of municipal oversight eventually grew into a formal Building Permits department. And when the Province of Ontario finally introduced the first unified Ontario Building Code on December 31, 1975, London was ready.

Today, the city’s Building By-law B-7 governs thousands of inspections every year.

Even Today, The Lessons Aren’t Over

I don’t want to pretend that tragedy is a thing of the past.

In December 2020, a partial collapse at a four-storey building on Teeple Terrace killed two construction workers and injured several others. The incident triggered eight charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) and led to a major review of safety practices in London’s construction industry.

Following guilty pleas under the OHSA, the court issued its final penalties in early 2024. The province levied a combined $400,000 in fines against two construction companies.

This incident proves an important point: building inspection isn’t a history lesson. It’s a living, breathing public service that saves lives every single day, usually invisibly.

Why This Matters for a Visitor

So why should you care about a building inspector from a century ago?

Because when you explore downtown London, you’re not just looking at old bricks. You’re looking at a city that survived its own worst instincts.

You can ride past the site of the old City Hall (Richmond Street, just south of Dundas) and know exactly why modern buildings have occupancy limits.

You can pass the old site of Reid’s Crystal Hall (since rebuilt to proper standards, so no one dies because someone rushed a renovation).

You can stand at the corner of Clarence and York, where Sterling Place now stands, and remember Fire Chief John A. Roe, who gave his life trying to save a building that should never have been so dangerous.

These aren’t grim stories. They’re resilience stories. They’re about a community that finally said, “Never again.”

The Joy of a City That Learned to Stand

Here’s what I love about London: we don’t hide our past. We ride right through it.

The same downtown that once crumbled is now filled with restored heritage buildings, safe sidewalks, lively patios, and public squares where people gather without fear. That’s not luck. That’s the legacy of an inspector who showed up to work a century ago and did a job nobody wanted, until suddenly, everyone needed it.

So when you visit, bring your curiosity. Bring your appetite for local history. And bring a quiet thank-you for the forgotten heroes who made sure London’s next chapter was built on something solid.

Hi. I’m Lawrence – bicycle tour guide and storyteller. I help curious folks like you discover the best parts of London, from a bicycle seat, of course.

We don’t just ride past the pretty parts. We tell you the real stories: the collapses, the comebacks, and the quiet heroes who rebuilt this city better than they found it.

If you want to see London the way it was meant to be seen, slowly, safely, and with a few good laughs along the way, come on a bicycle tour with me.

👉 Click here to learn more. Now, let’s go find some history.