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.
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.
In terms of reuse and the context of the location, this would have been a far better reuse candidate the the Ford Casting Plant.
The Ford plant was added on to several times, and horrible unsympathetic additions were made to the building time and time again. Yes the FCP was a good looking building, but it’s reuse potential was very low. Don’t forget it’s on Ford property, surrounded by current active Ford operations. The reuse of that structure when surrounding buildings are still active factories is not feasible at all.
This building on the other hand was centrally located, and close to amenities. There was a retail plaza 50 feet away.
Just because it doesn’t conform to your view of what is a good building, or that you view it as a pile of “crap” doesn’t mean that isn’t a beter candidate for reuse than one built by Albert Kahn.
That entire stretch of McDougall has the potenital to be something cool, however I doubt there is the will or support of most of Windsor and Essex County to do so.
I was recently in Hamilton, and had the chance to visit the T.H. & B gallery space, that is located in a converted textile factory. The building houses artist studios and a giant top floor exhibition space. It is truly a great reuse. Something like that would be perfect for the Walkerville Power Building. I suspect however that there is little hope of reuse there for that one either.
As for the brick. All the exterior brick on the Club Lofts is new. If need be the exterior brick could be replaced. As I stood watching the building being demolished, it was amazing how well built it was. The brick walls were three courses thick, and even with nothing holding them up, the bulldozer was not having an easy time taking them down.
I just don’t see it. Almost every day I walkby this ugly looking aluminum clad building that was covered with graffitti and had broken windows for years to go to McDougall Plaza. Everybody in the neighbourhood complains about it. You’ve got a dumpy building covered with graffitti like this for years only a block from Kennedy High School. Loft conversion condos tend to be on the pricey side and who’s gonna pay that kind of money when it’s surrounded by plain looking aluminum clad warehouses? The only building worth preserving on this McDougall corridor would be the Windsor Truck and Storage tower. There are much better corridors in this city surrounding by gems that are worthy of conversion and fighting for. Regardless, there’s no sense crying over spilt milk. What’s done is done.
Checking the city directories from 1934 – 1937 for a brewery, only turned up Brewer’s Warehouse at several close addresses on McDougall near Hanna through those years.
Thanks for checking Urbanrat. It was likely either a Brewer’s warehouse or a warehouse belonging to Mr. Brewer. Either the directory or the Fire Insurance Map got it wrong… 🙂
Don’t give up on Windsor yet Andrew. The downturn in the local economy may be the kick in the pants that this area needs to get innovative development off the ground. Where else but in Windsor and Essex County can valuable old properties like the Lowe Martin house be picked up for a fraction of its’ real value? The folks who haven’t been driven away by the bad local economy will find a lot of diamonds in the rough waiting for eager entrepreneurs to breathe life into them.