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Categories: Photo Du JourWindsor

Seagrave Fire

Thursday night/Friday morning saw a fire over on Walker Rd. at the historic Seagrave Factory. For a bit of background on the building, see this post from March 20th, 2006.

Luckily the fire that has been ruled as arson, didn’t cause any major damage to the century old building. Fire officials estimated about $250k in damage, but ruled the building free of structural damage.

Most old factory buildings of this vintage, were built in what is known as the “Mill Construction” style. That meant the old fashioned type of wooden post and beam construction vs. the more modern style of reinforced concrete. Back in the early part of the century having huge beams in your building construction that would take hours to burn through, allowed one to claim their building as “fireproof”. 🙂

The scar on the back wall is visible in the b&w photo from 1913 as a door. Border Cities Wire & Iron Works were in this location in 1927. I’m not sure how long they were around but that painted sign is probably of a similar vintage.

Broken windows, and soot on the bricks seem to be the extent of the damage.

This shot in HDR gives a good idea of where the fire was, you can see where the flames and smoke blackened the brick.

Andrew

View Comments

  • This certainly looks like a good candidate for lofts. Hopefully someone steps forward. (My bank account is a little light this month!). Any idea if there are contamination issues preventing reuse of this place? Good example of what more money invested in Brownfield funds could do for cities.

  • i was thinking the same thing...i'd love to see this builidng turn into a loft. i remember going in there once when ritchie hawtin held a party there. aaaa...good times...good times.

  • I would love to get a tour of the interior of this building. Always wondered "what went on in there".

  • This building does seem to have loft potential, however, there would be better potential I think if there were still that buffer between the sidewalk and the traffic. Fires, vandalism, and time may have damaged this building, but I think the road widening did the most harm.

  • My friends had an enormous skate ramp in this building. Does anyone remember the skate shop that was behind the building.....RIPCITY.

    ...SK8T or die

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Andrew

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