Another part of Windsor’s past was lost Tuesday night in a spectacular fire. Seen above in happier days, the building on McDougall Ave and Hanna, was originally built as the Swedish Crucible Steel Company in 1914. The historic section being the middle part of the building. The Swedish Crucible Steel Company was an early automotive supplier, making castings for the automotive industry.
Photo c. 2008 – John Stefani
A huge thanks goes out to regular reader and contributor John, who was on scene at the fire last night with his camera. John has graciously agreed to allow me to post some of his shots. The rest can be seen here.
This is a shot of the fire at about its peak.
Photo c. 2008 – John Stefani
The main wall gives way…
Photo c. 2008 – John Stefani
… Look out below!
Photo c. 2008 – John Stefani
Firefighters catch a much needed hydration break.
John was at the scene until about 2:00 am.
This is the scene at 7:30 yesterday morning.
The old section is a complete loss.
Ladder truck No. 4 is still on the scene fighting the fire that broke out abut 11:00 pm last night. This shot is from 7:30 am.
A shot of nearly the same view as above later in the afternoon. This shot is from 4:30 pm.
That yellow beast is a Seagrave pumper. Good to see there are still Seagrave Trucks protecting our city.
The large buckled wall was the original exterior front wall of the Swedish Crucible Steel Company building. The part of the building on the corner being a later addition.
Demolition continues on the structure.
More demo…
At the end of the day there was no loss of life, so from that side there is a happy ending. Windsor Fire Fighters managed to keep the blaze from spreading to Aaron’s Mini-storage too. So great job there. However sadly it’s another loss of density to the core, and to the historic factory district. I’m sure the area will remain a vacant lot for many years to come.
As you can see from the 1937 map, the front section was a later addition (on the right). The original building was contained in the louvered section.
A brewery warehouse & the Canadian Battery and Bonalite Co. Ltd. are shown as tenants in 1937. Canadian Battery and Bonalite Co. Ltd, later changed their name to Olsonite. If you’ve got an older house, check your toilet seats, it might be an Olsonite. (According to this history, in 1973, the Swedish Crucible Steel Co. legally changed their name to Olsonite)
In the 1923 directory, the building lists its tenants as the Swedish Crucible Steel & the Canadian Battery Container Corp.
To view some interior shots of the building from 2006, click here to visit Mike Beauchamp’s site.
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I was in that building many times....My mom worked there when the last owners were in there it was called Workwear Linen Company they moved out of there couple years ago..you could see the old time brick work and windows that were in there
I guess the building had a little fire this morning around 5:45a again. Reported from AM800 on there web site. Neat little building, in an area of former Warehouse district.
Ian, not to split hairs but that area was a factory district more thana warhouse district when it was first constructed.
Olsonite still makes toilet seats. There used to be a factory in Tilbury until it closed up around 2001 and moved to the southern USA.
Does anyone know the name of the brewery that used it as a warehouse.
Mike - No idea.. A check of the City Directories from the period (1937) might yield more specific info...
It's a tragedy when we lose a part of our history like this. If the overpaid idiots who run City Hall had more vision, the McDougall corridor could have become Windsor's answer to Toronto's Distillery District. The ingredients were all there.Vacant buildings can always be converted into urban lofts or subdivided into offices. Let's hope Chris Holt decides to run for mayor in 09.
Interesting to see that Windsor "movers & shakers (better represented as fakers)" is hob-nobbing in T.O. in a former warehouse district that is now booming due to residential lofts, and businesses refurbishing these behemoths. Yet in Windsor we tear down anything that stays vacant for a time with no vision by the owner. How do we compete with an administration that doesn't have the clue or will to make it happen?
Convert this building into lofts?? You've got to be kidding. The brickwork was clad with aluminum siding. If you take it off, there's hundreds of screw holes drilled through the brick that was used to hold up the siding and who knows how bad the repointing was underneath, if there even was brickwork underneath as opposed to cinderblock. The cinderblock wall at the corner of Hana/McDougal was painted and it's next to impossible to get paint off brick/concrete. It was constantly hit with graffitti and vandalized while vacant for many years. There was water damage from lots of broken windows that were never covered over the years. There's was nothing of architectural significance from what I saw. It was just a plain, average looking warehouse, unlike the Seagrave building which had the brickwork exposed with stepworks and other kinds of classic architectural styles. The place was up on the market half a year ago for $380,000 and the agent told me it required over $150,000 of work in outstanding code issues that needed to be rectified before you could even carry on a business there. In Tuesday's paper, it said on the third page it still had outstanding code issues with the fire department. How they even got a permit for this clothing charity to operate there, let alone a license to store highly flammable products which turned the place into a fireball for several hours while firefighters were hosing it down with water was beyond me.
David,
First off no one said to transform that building into lofts. Second, screw holes in brick can be fixed. Third, even if someone wanted to convert that into lofts it could have been done.
If people can transform a former whisky warehouse into lofts those could have been done as well but again no one stated that the building should have been lofts. That district could have been more much than it is/was. Cripes you are one negative person.
ME, George suggested that the ingredients were there turn them into lofts.. No, you can fill in brick with coloured grout, but it's not the same. Once you take the original oven glaze off of brick, it's durability is gone and the brick starts crumbling into dust from weather really fast, I don't know what your experience is with cleaning graffitti from brick, tryng to fix it, or clean up a bad repointing job with mortar smeared on the front glaze of brick. It takes me over two hours cleaning a square foot of graffitti on brick with a plastic brush and muriatic acid and only 70% of it comes off. That's it. It doesn't fully come out and that's the best product out there for it. The graffitti remover they sell at Rona doesn't work worth jack. Comparing the Walkerville lofts to this place is like comparing apples to oranges because the brickwork is exposed and in mint condition. You want to remove paint from a warehouse that's been painted, it's not gonna happen. I'm not being negative. It just isn't realistic. You should walk around this area. It isn't distillery district in Toronto with all the exposed brickwork warehouses, Detroit distillery yards, or even the warehouses around near Hiram Walkers. You think a Ford focus is a Cadiallac. It isn't the same. More effort should be focused on preserving truly worthy buidlings like the Albert Kahn warehouse that was part of the Ford casting plant before it's gone instead of crap like this.