Princess Street (Kingston, Ontario)

Princess Street is a major arterial road in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. As the main retail street of downtown Kingston, it is lined by many historic limestone buildings in the city's downtown core.

Princess Street begins at Kingston's current western city limits in Westbrook (continuing from Main Street, Odessa) and ends at the downtown waterfront east of Ontario Street. Eastbound traffic is then carried by Ontario Street across the Lasalle Causeway to Barriefield. All of Princess Street and most of Ontario Street formed part of the Provincial Highway, the main highway from Windsor/Toronto to Montréal until a Kingston Bypass was constructed at the end of 1954. In the outlying western sections of the city, the road was known primarily as "Highway 2", with the Princess Street name gradually adopted as the urban area expanded west.

The street was originally called Store Street due to a large government store at the lower end. It was renamed Princess Street in honour of the birth of the Princess Royal in approximately 1840. The portion west of Highway 33, originally well outside the city limits, appears on maps as York Road at least until 1908 and is historically part of the original 1817 Kingston Road from Toronto. An 1839 toll road, one of the first to be macadamized in the region, retained this same path between Kingston and Napanee; some of this road's stone markers remain visible on the western portion of Princess Street today.

A horse-drawn Street Railway had operated on Princess from Concession Street to the foot of downtown from 1877 to 1905; electric streetcars replaced this on an abbreviated route (Princess from Alfred Street to downtown) until 1930, when the streetcars were destroyed and the system converted to buses.

...
Wikipedia