The Mattress Factory

My wife, Hermione , and I live in a building known as The Mattress Factory which is designated as an historic building. 

The Peterborough Mattress Company was started in 1878 by William Faint and Jim Doxsee. The address on their letterhead was ‘on the Otonabee River at the east end of the Hunter Street bridge’. It eventually became 1 & 3 Hunter St East.  

After the building was expropriated by the city to create James Stephenson Park, Jim Ellis, who had bought the business in 1914, had the building rebuilt at the rear of his Mark St residence in 1927. Everything that was used in the ‘new’ building was salvaged from the previous Hunter St building and others. The business operated at this site until 1973 at which time the new owner moved it to The Parkway and then Toronto.

Harold Kotkanen operated an upholstery business in the building from 1975 to 1985. A fire badly damaged the building in 1988, it was somewhat repaired and sat unused until we purchased it in 2004. Milestones along the path of restoration have been, receiving designation as an historic building in 2012 and moving our residence into it in 2015.

My workshop is on the main floor of the building and is a lovely creative space with large south facing windows. All of the windows, doors and cabinets used in salvaging this historic building were created on site.