Mairlyn's Photos - Dec 12 2025 - Diana Sweets

 

Anyone who lived in St. Catharines between the 1920s and the 1990s knows the name Diana Sweets.  It was a restaurant on St. Paul Street with ornate gumwood booths lining its interior.  It was in the Globe and Mail this morning, as the location has been renovated into a pizza shop and a music hall.   What remains of Diana Sweets interior has left the building long ago.  It went to the Harley-Davidson motorcycle store just off Glendale Avenue in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  It is a strange experience to see this reconstructed interior.  And stranger to experience it to the smell of motorcycle tires and leather jackets.  Back to St. Paul Street, the revitalization of this section of St. Paul Street includes Helliwell Hall - a brewery and concert hall.  It is at 107 St. Paul Street.  Downtown St. Catharines is now part of Brock University, with the Performing Arts Centre, student housing and apartments, and student pubs and restaurants.  No longer a bustling downtown of a mid-20th century town. Here are my pictures from the Harley Store site.  Everything seemed small in comparison to the size of tables and booths now.  It was familiar, though.  We went there on Saturdays with our grandmother who treated us to ice cream and french fries.  Or was it ice cream or french fries?

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Diana Sweets

Diana Sweets was a restaurant on St. Paul Street, the main street of St. Catharines. Our grandmother took us there for sundaes on a Saturday.  The interior is Art Deco from the 1920's.  It was a favourite spot for many decades, but eventually closed in the late 1990's. Benny Cooperman the detective in the Howard Engel novels would eat there.   The interior was stored in a Buffalo warehouse for a number of years.  And by good fortune, the Harley-Davidson store owner bought it in 2008 and installed it in the store.   I went in yesterday to see this piece of St. Catharines history. I was not amongst my cohorts in the store - I immediately noticed the  women with 'big hair' under backwards baseball caps. But I made my way to the important corner where coffee and espresso are available. It was enjoyable to see the booths and counter, along with the stained glass sign and the waitress uniforms.   The St. Catharines Standard article on the wall is here and a youtube video is here.  The video that followed was St. Catharines 1954.  The Hotel Dieu Hospital is in that video - I had captured the demolition earlier in the year.  It is now a flat space, awaiting the start of a retirement complex.  The big news yesterday, though, was spotting a Bald Eagle in the trees on the Lake beside the restaurant, the Lakehouse.