Where the dates come from
The hotel's history below comes from its Wikipedia entry, a secondary source; the casino's opening date comes from the casino itself; the amusement-park years from Wikipedia's Maple Leaf Village article. Where two sources disagree, we say which we used.
The hotel site, 1890s to today
| Year | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Early 1890s | The Parkside Inn, three storeys with an observatory, is built on the site | Wikipedia |
| 1914–1921 | The inn serves as a wing of the neighbouring Clifton Hotel (which burned down in 1932) | Wikipedia |
| 1923 | Howard Fox buys it; it becomes the Clifton Inn, then simply The Inn | Wikipedia |
| 1926 | Remodelled as a mock old-English inn: the Fox Head Hotel | Wikipedia |
| 1951 | Sheraton Hotels buys the Foxhead | Wikipedia |
| 1958–1959 | The hotel closes and reopens the next year, its western end converted into Tussaud's Waxworks | Wikipedia |
| 1964–1966 | The rest of the old building is demolished; the Sheraton-Foxhead Motor Inn opens in 1966 | Wikipedia |
| 2000 | The 14-storey block is gutted, eight storeys are added, and it reopens as the 22-storey Sheraton on the Falls | Wikipedia |
| 2021 | Renovated again and renamed Sheraton Fallsview | Wikipedia |
| 2026 | The hotel group describes a completed $50 million transformation and 669 rooms | Falls Avenue Resort |
The casino site: from roller coaster to roulette
Wikipedia's account of the block next door starts with Frontier Amusement Park in the early 1900s, which had one of Canada's first all-steel roller coasters and was gone by 1910. The Oneida Community Plate company later put its local offices here, and an observation tower — the Oneida Tower, later the Kodak Tower — opened for the 1964 season. In May 1979 Maple Leaf Village opened: a three-storey complex with a cinema, shops, a midway and a Ferris wheel billed as North America's largest. The amusement park closed after the 1992 season; the Ferris wheel was dismantled and shipped to Asia in spring 1993; the mall closed for good on 1 February 1995 (Wikipedia).
Casino Niagara opened in the building on 9 December 1996 — the date on the casino's own site; Wikipedia's Maple Leaf Village article gives 7 December, and we use the casino's (casinoniagara.com). Wikipedia says it was the second casino to open in Ontario and was meant to be temporary until a bigger casino was built; Fallsview Casino Resort opened up the hill in 2004 and Casino Niagara stayed. The tower survives as the Casino Tower, closed to the public and used as a sign (Wikipedia). In 2019 OLG gave the operation of both casinos to Mohegan.
Story one: the waxworks in the hotel
It sounds like a legend; it is in the record. When Sheraton reopened the Foxhead in 1959, part of the old building had become Tussaud's Waxworks, and Wikipedia notes that this western end "still stands". A wax museum sharing a wall with a hotel at the edge of Clifton Hill is about as Niagara as a fact can be.
Story two: Blondin's omelette and Farini's wine
The hotel group's own history page tells the tightrope seasons. The Great Blondin, a French acrobat, made his first crossing in June 1859 and eight more that summer, adding a wheelbarrow, an omelette cooked on the rope and his manager carried on his back. The Great Farini answered in 1860: halfway across, the page says, he lowered himself on a second rope to the deck of the Maid of the Mist, 61 feet below, drank a glass of wine, and climbed back up. His last Niagara stunt — on stilts at the brink — ended when a stilt broke and he scrambled to Robinson Island (hotel group). These are told as history by the hotel group; we pass them on in its words.
Story three: Annie Taylor's age — legend and record
In the hotel group's version, Annie Edson Taylor "celebrated her 46th birthday" by going over the Falls in a padded oak barrel with a heart-shaped pillow. In Wikipedia's version, sourced to the record, the date was 24 October 1901, her 63rd birthday; she had told people she was 42 and gave her birth year as 1860 in the 1900 census, hoping to earn more as a younger daredevil. Two days earlier her cat went over in the same barrel and survived. Taylor was pulled out alive with a cut on her head (Wikipedia). The legend is the age she wanted; the record is the age she was. Both are part of the story.
Story four: two hotels, one name
From 1993 to 2011 the name "Sheraton Fallsview" belonged to a different building at 6755 Fallsview Boulevard — today Niagara Falls Marriott on the Falls. Since 2021 it belongs to this one on Falls Avenue. Map and booking searches can still mix the two up; our field note sorts the names out.
Stunts at the Falls are now prohibited because of the danger to performers and rescuers, as the hotel group's page itself notes. The stories are history, not an invitation.