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Streets of Downtown Kirkland Lake

Colour scan of a fire insurance map with two streets on it. Many square and rectangular shapes are on the map, showing the locations of homes and businesses.

Title: Downtown Streets of KL – Rooming/Boarding Houses, 1928

Source: Fire Insurance Map, Underwriters’ Survey Bureau Ltd.

Museum of Northern History Collection

Mines in the area usually had a bunkhouse for the single men working at the site. But for those miners and other workers in town who didn’t have a place to sleep and eat, they often stayed in rooming houses. Kirkpatrick and Kirkland Street near the centre of town had several of these open for business since the late 1910s.

In addition to rooming houses, other services located nearby included bathhouses, pool halls, theatres, laundries, and social clubs. These were mostly geared to the younger single men living in the area, but single-family dwellings (marked with a “D”) are on the map as well.

Scan of a page from the 1937 Kirkland Lake Phone Directory. The many boarding houses of Kirkland Lake are listed.

Boarding Houses of Kirkland Lake, 1937