This photograph taken in the 1930s shows Port Arthur's waterfront very much as it looked around World War I. The stately buildings reflect the heady faith in the future of the Twin Cities as the "Chicago of the North". At the right is the Canadian Northern (later Canadian National) Railway station. Next is the Customs Building which later became the premises of the Port Arthur News-Chronicle. The largest building is the Prince Arthur Hotel. Built by the Canadian Northern Railway in 1910, it was one of many elegant hostelries along the waterfront used by passengers arriving by train or boat. The small round structure graced with a cupola is the Pagoda, built in 1910 as Canada's first tourist bureau. Conveniently located near two railway stations and steamship docks, it is just behind the Canadian Pacific Railway's local freight office, while the C.P.R. station is just out of view to the right. The elegant white structure at the far right is the Whalen Building which opened in 1914. Among the many enterprises of its builder, James Whalen, were Western (Port Arthur) Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company, Dominion Towing and Wrecking, Great Lakes Dredging Company, and the first pulpwood operation in the district.
The subsequent fate of these buildings suggests a turning away from the waterfront and Port Arthur's historic past. in the 1930s the Whalen Building was stripped of its builder's name to become the Public Utilities Building. In the 1970s, the C.P.R. Station was torn down and the Canadian National Station ceased to be a railway stop. Only the City of Thunder Bay's declaration that the Pagoda is a significant historic site has saved the structure from destruction. For a while the News Chronicle Building and the Prince Arthur Hotel stood vacant, their future in doubt. But by the late 1970s parkland graces the deteriorating site of the former habour and renewed activity gives promise of salvaging these structural witnesses to past greatness.
