Initial Settlement
The history of European settlement on the site of Kitchener begins in 1784 when the British crown set aside 600,000 acres of land as a reserve for the Six Nations Indians. This reserve was, in part, reward for their loyalty to the Crown during the Revolutionary War and, in part, compensation for those parts of their traditional homelands and hunting grounds that had been lost to the newly formed United States of America.

In 1798, the Six Nations sold what was known as Block 2 – an area of about 94,000 acres – to Colonel Richard Beasley, who undertook further land subdivision and sale. The land was thirty miles inland of the Great Lakes, which served as the primary means of transportation, and therefore was considered less than prime territory for settlement. However, this very isolation appealed to a group of Mennonites in Pennsylvania, which by this time had become over-settled in their view.

Sixty thousand acres were purchased from Colonel Beasley in 1803 by the German Company, a group funded by twenty-six Mennonites from Pennsylvania. The German Company Tract was then sub-divided into even-sized farm lots of 448 acres each. Unlike other parts of Upper Canada this survey did not include public structures such as road allowances, Crown Reserves or Clergy Reserves, which resulted in an unusually irregular lot and street pattern, relatively narrow streets and the absence of designated sites for public buildings. The farms were numbered and assigned by lot to prospective settlers to ensure that the division of land was fair to each member. Mennonite migration continued until 1828 and established a solid agricultural base of settlement. In so doing, it also established the primary organization and geometry of the land.

The original settlement was located where the Great Road from Dundas crossed the farm of Joseph Schneider, a Mennonite farmer who had settled in 1807. The Great Road was impossible to use much of the year as it traversed mosquito-infested swamps in the summer, was closed by snow in the winter, and was regularly obliterated by blowing sand. The original hamlet grew along the Great Road, adjacent to a cedar and tamarack swamp. Initially called Ben Eby’s, after Bishop Benjamin Eby, another 1807 arrival who built a meeting house, it’s name changed to Ebytown and later to Sandhills.

The initial settlement remained isolated until the 1820’s. At that time the first bridge was built across the Grand River at Freeport, thereby easing travel to Dundas and, beyond it, to York (Toronto). At the same time, a new wave of German immigrants arrived. Unlike the Mennonites, whose principal interest was farming, the new immigrants were tradesmen, artisans, craftsmen and industrialists. For them, the existence of a German-speaking community was attractive, as were the opportunities of a well-established local market and easy access, via the Beverly Road, to the markets in Dundas and York.

The period from 1825 until 1835 was one of tremendous growth during which principal roads and the initial seeds of the future town were established. While the Mennonites sought privacy in the countryside, the German group established and built the town. The hamlet was renamed Berlin.

By 1853, Berlin had grown to assume sufficient prominence to be designated the county town of Waterloo County and was incorporated as a village. This led to the construction of the first county buildings, notably the Courthouse of 1853. While King Street (the Great Road) was already the main thorough fare at this time, it was still a swamp from Queen Street to Foundry (Ontario) Street, and had to be traversed by cedar boardwalks.

Industrialization
With the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1856, the economy of the village began a process of virtually uninterrupted expansion and industrialization that continues to the present. Its initial effect was to establish Berlin as an important agricultural trading centre; with a direct line to Toronto the merchants of Berlin could forego Hamilton as an intermediary destination. While the village lacked natural water power, steam power was introduced in the 1860’s and fostered the development of significant manufacturing.

Unlike other Ontario towns, Berlin’s urban morphology did not include any major landscape features to dictate or constrain its growth. Business and industry developed along the Great Road (King Street) and the road to Joseph Schneider’s farm (Queen Street). King Street was located in a valley that was surrounded on three sides by sand ridges and was open to the south where the terrain was swampy and unsuitable for building. Queen Street’s natural advantage came from its intersection with King Street near a high point of the valley.

The railway had come to Berlin without cost due to its status as a county town. Whereas other towns struggled to assemble the resources for the railway and experienced considerable land speculation in anticipation of it, Kitchener did not. However, the initial subdivision of land along the new railway was undertaken by George Grange of nearby Guelph, who purchased the lands for speculation. His subdivision of 1853 follows the geometry of the rail alignment but his anticipation of a market here for housing failed to materialize. Ultimately these lands became sites for major industrial works including rubber plants, furniture factories and felt manufacturing, all of which were laid out along the geometry of the railway line.

A major change was effected to the topography of the village in 1877 when the sand hills in front of the Town Hall were levelled and the soil used to fill in the swamp at King and Foundry (Ontario) Streets. The level of king Street was altered by as much as nine feet either up or down, which precipitated major rebuilding as some structures found their basements at street level while others could suddenly walk out on the second floor.

The town was incorporated in 1870 and divided into wards for the first time. King Street and Queen Street were the borders of the initial four wards. Remarkably, there was little social distinction between the wards. An Ottawa journalist remarked in 1904 that, unlike other towns where industries usually congregated to the east end of town, Berlin’s were located everywhere.

Commercial development continued to concentrate on King Street. Industrialists and tradesmen often lived above their places of business initially, and as they prospered built houses nearby. Housing for workers also developed close to the workplace. Later, near the end of the century, more identifiably well-off residential districts developed around what is now MacKenzie King Square, and around Victoria Park.

Consolidation
At the town prospered, the earlier structures along King Street gave way to larger and grander ones, such as the 1893 version of the Walper Hotel at King Street and Queen Street which remains today. The successive generations of Town Halls at King and Frederick Streets (1869,1925, and 1972) also marks the growth and pride of the community. One of the significant advances of the 1925 City Hall, in addition to the separation of the market into an independent structure, was the creation of an urban space in front of the building. This space was modestly landscaped, became the site of the local cenotaph and played an active part in the life of the community.

With considerable foresight, the town bought twenty-five acres of land from Joseph Schneider in 1872 and called it Woodside Park. The park was expanded and officially opened as Victoria Park in 1896 – a large, picturesque pleasure ground for its residents, an amenity that still serves today as the city’s "Central Park".

Dependent for so long on an extensive steam power network, Berlin was keen to seize the development of major hydro generation at Niagara Falls. Through the city’s lobbying efforts, Kitchener became the first municipality in Ontario to receive electric power from Niagara Falls by means of long-distance transmission lines.

By the time of its incorporation as a City, Berlin was beginning to experience "city" problems. In response to growing concern about traffic congestion, the crowding together of factories and homes and a serious housing shortage, the Board of Trade, encouraged by the Mayor and Council, formed a Civic Association in 1912 and hired Charles leavitt of New York to produce a city plan. Since the natural direction for growth in Kitchener was towards neighbouring Waterloo, Waterloo participated in the plan. It was the first time that the fates of the two towns were explicitly linked. The Leavitt Plan was produced in 1914, but was considered too grandiose and abandoned with the coming of World War One. Nevertheless, it was prophetic in its anticipation of extensive suburban growth.

While few changes occurred to the urban form of the town during the War, it brought about a movement to change the town’s name. In 1916, Berlin became Kitchener.

Following the War the provincial government established its first Planning and Development Act, and Kitchener was the first municipality to create a Planning Commission. Planner Thomas Adams was hired in 1922 and drafted the City’s first urban plan, which showed Waterloo. The plan rejected notions of civic grandeur and emphasized "orderly development" that would "produce beauty (through planning and proper zoning) without seeking beauty as an end in itself." Adam’s plan was finished by Horace Seymour and approved by City Council in 1925. While some aspects of this plan (frontages, etc.) were implemented, the Depression slowed development. Like the 1914 plan, most of the growth was structured on the periphery and clearer distinctions were made between industrial and residential districts.

Post War Expansion & Downtown Renewal
While the Kitchener economy had slowed dramatically during both the First World War and the Depression, it’s manufacturing operations thrived during the Second World War and were easily converted following the War to peace-time production. King Street remained the vital commercial artery, with new and modern buildings slowly replacing earlier structures, but with little change to the basic urban form. At the same time, industry remained largely in its traditional locations along the railway until well after the War.

During the 1950’s Kitchener annexed about 8,000 acres, continuing its steady path of expansion. With it came increasing suburban development and the construction of major transportation infrastructure. In 1947 Kitchener, Waterloo and Waterloo County formed a joint Kitchener-Waterloo and Suburban Planning Board, which adopted a plan for roads in 1949 that included a "ring road". The proposed route was not implemented at that time, but approximated the route of the Conestoga Parkway of 1971.

By 1960, Highway 401 was constructed to serve as the major automobile and trucking route linking Windsor and Montreal, via Toronto, which fostered commercial development along King Street (Highway 8) eastward from the downtown towards the new highway. At the same time, suburban expansion had reached such a scale as to precipitate the development of the first large suburban shopping mall – Fairview Park Mall of 1965 – sparking concern for the continued vitality of the downtown. Already in 1962, the Kitchener Chamber of Commerce convened a meeting of the 250 largest taxpayers at which officials warned of major problems of growth in the future. The downtown was in difficulty and in 1963, the Kitchener Urban Renewal Committee was formed to give direction to the process of urban renewal. The result was a plan for downtown released in 1965. The proposals included a pedestrian mall in the central area, an extension of Victoria Park into the city centre, a one-way perimeter traffic route with parking facilities, hotels and office buildings along it, a new civic centre, high-rise and high-density residential redevelopment around the central area, retention of industry and control of transitional commercial uses along major access routes.

During the following twenty years, various aspects of this plan have come to fruition: the one-way ring roadway (Duke, Francis and Charles Streets) is nearly complete; a civic centre precinct now includes a theatre, art gallery, provincial courthouse, library, police headquarters and federal building; some high-rise residential development has occurred; and sidewalk widenings and street improvements have been implemented on King Street.

The tension between development of the suburbs and the consolidation of the downtown continued. During the early 1970’s it seemed that in order to compete with the suburban retail centres, the downtown needed its own malls, preferably one at either end of the central section of King Street. Much controversy still surrounds the decision in 1971 by City Council to sell the site of its 1925 City Hall and Farmers’ Market to make way for a shopping centre, known as the Eaton Centre. While the City moved into leased space in a new office building, a two-storey mall was constructed at the corner of King and Frederick Streets. The mall includes a public parking garage, which houses a relocated Farmers’ Market on its lower levels, and a new clock tower in steel and green glass, which replaces the former Clock Tower of the City Hall.

Over the past decade the City has taken several initiatives to strengthen and improve the downtown. While downtown Kitchener is continued to be a popular retail area in the region, it has been perceived as lacking a sufficiently vital image. To address this public space and King Street facade improvements have been undertaken in collaboration with the local business community. Some new infill commercial development has occurred and several major new commercial projects are in the planning stages.

As well, new programmes are being created to promote the construction of housing in the downtown. Although there is considerable housing immediately adjacent to the downtown, there is little within it and no existing pattern of mixed-use commercial/residential development. This would add neighbourhood character, services and retailing to what is otherwise becoming the major regional service centre, and would extend the hours of activity into evenings and weekends.

In 1988 a new urban/inter-urban transit terminal was opened on Charles Street. Plans are underway for the provision of additional parking in the downtown. And the City is considering extending Victoria Park to provide a new entrance at the foot of Gaukel Street. City Hall and the Civic Square is integral to the process of downtown revitalization and to give it further momentum.

Courtesy of The City of Kitchener