Downtown Guelph - History

History

John Galt, founder of Guelph, assisted by his surveyor, planned the community. He plotted a series of large public "squares" of varied shape; this unique street design provided one of the earliest examples of town planning in Ontario.

Tradition relates that John Galt, or one of his companions, laid his outstretched hand on a tree stump and predicted that the streets of the new town would radiate from a central point such as his fingers radiated from his palm. It is true that the main streets of downtown Guelph do follow such a pattern, but which came first, the legend or the plan, remains in doubt.

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