Happy Friday everyone! This Friday’s old photo is dated August 18, 1935, and the caption reads “Canadian Steel Plant Ojibway”.
In this photo we’re looking east back towards Brighton Beach, the river is to our back, and that boat slip, is the one we saw back in this November post.
Does anyone know what the purpose was of the stuff at the base? There is an identical one at each end of the furnace. It almost looks like something that was left unbuilt, but I wonder if it didn’t have some other purpose as it appears the same at both ends.
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Well 30 years later there seems to be no sign of it..Did this ever go into operation or was it just torn down?? Does anyone know
Were the furnaces possibly decomissioned at this point as it is post depression? Has Windsor ever really recovered from the great depression? It seems we have always “had” so much more industry around here…
We did Rick. In fact we were a truly diverse city economically speaking. But as teh world moved towards globalization these companies went bust.
The “arches” look like some sort of conveyor but I can’t tell what that “sarcophagus” would be.
I recall hearing from my parents that the entire mills foundation had sunk even before it began operating, this bankrupted the project and it was abandoned.
I recall my mother stating that the whole plant sank on one side bankrupting the company, It was a big blow for a full new development in Ojibwa. For years you could see the corner curbs off of highay 18 where non-existent streets were planned.
Blast furnace 101: the furnaces are incomplete. The furnaces are the two structures at opposite ends . The middle portions are where air is preheated before entering the furnace bottom – pipes visible. The tops of the furnaces are missing structures which are used to continuously reload the furnaces, and also to collect exhaust gases which are used to preheat the air, and for other onsite uses. Also missing are rails to bring raw materials to the furnaces and take away the slag and molten iron produced by the furnaces. The unfinished concrete structures were probably support structures for the missing bits and pieces.
Back in the 20’s, the U.S steel company had ambitious plans to turn Windsor into the “Canadian Pittsburgh.” The steel plant was part of a planned community that would include houses, schools and churches along with a mammoth steel complex that would rival Ford’s River Rouge operation. Alas, the Great Depression and the introduction of the “Hoot Smalley” tariff bill by the U.S Congress killed it for good.
You can still see the scars in the ground from the blast furnace here:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=windsor+ont&aq=&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=42.435514,78.837891&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Windsor,+Essex+County,+Ontario&ll=42.267819,-83.099286&spn=0.000739,0.001203&t=h&z=20
Nice photo Andrew, thanks!
This just solidifies to me that Windsor has always been dealt a bad hand…
Amazing post Andrew.
When I was working at the Grain Terminal (now ADM) twenty one years ago an elderly man came around looking for those blast furnaces, which at the time really intrigued me. I wish we had I.M. back then! To think those scars Aaron found were right there all along.
Thanks everyone!
The “Canadian Pittsburgh”? How bout “Windsor, At Least It’s Not Hamilton”. Stephen’s observation was the first thing that came into my head, there being no rail access to the site.
Amazing information – Andrew, this website is truly remarkable, thank you!
douglasm, the Essex Terminal ran right along the slip…actually I just noticed you can see a boxcar along the slip. I know what you ment, direct access, but I was looking at a 1949 aerial and there at that point anyways, seems to be the faint outline of a ROW.
According to what the Border Cities Star published at that time, there were 2 more blast furnaces to be built, for a total of 4 — hence the duplicated unfinished concrete structures. I think the concrete structures would have been used to enclose the process of feeding and emptying the furnaces.
Just as a note to the absence of rail service to the site. I just found a photo from the WPL of the furnace and it indeed had acsess to rail. Infact, the line went right in between these mystery structures. Granted, there appears to be anchors in the concrete suggesting there was more to build….but….it was there.
http://heritage.windsorpubliclibrary.com/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fheritage&CISOPTR=913&DMSCALE=100&DMWIDTH=600&DMHEIGHT=600&DMMODE=viewer&DMFULL=0&DMX=24&DMY=0&DMTEXT=&DMTHUMB=1&REC=17&DMROTATE=0&x=270&y=191
Regarding the concrete structures at the ends of the two furnaces, each would have supported a “cast house” around the base of the furnace, where molten pig iron would be drawn off the furnace and hauled by rail to a nearby steel plant for processing. Slag would have been removed there, too. Also missing are two “skip cars”—inclined trolleys to carry ore, coke, limestone and other ingredients (delivered by freighter) to dump into the top of the furnaces. None of that was ever built, of course. Canada’s thirst for steel had begun to wane with the end of WWI and the postwar recession all but killed rail’s need for steel, too. With only sewers, curbs and sidewalks to show for itself, construction on the huge Ojibway townsite ground to a halt first but the furnaces continued to be built. It was the Great Depression that caused US Steel to quit the Canadian project completely, the furnaces never having seen fire. Begun in 1913, the furnace site was finally abandoned in about 1930. When this aerial photo was taken in 1935, the site was already looking lonely and overgrown. Two years later, it was sold to DOSCO. The furnaces were pulled down in 1958. (My grandfather and uncle were building engineers for the project.)
Fantastic information on this site, thanks guys & gals. A sad story on ‘what might have/could have been’
Until I saw these photos I never knew of this furnace plant’s existence in Windsor. These blast furnaces were identical to most of the “second generation” blast furnaces constructed at the Gary Indiana Works, from 1916 to the late 1920s. So this is no coincidence that these uncompleted Ojibway site furnaces were duplicates of the Gary furnaces, since U.S.Steel had constructed both plants. At the Gary Works, the furnaces of this same design, specifically units 1,2,3,5,8,9,10,11 and 12 survived into the 1980s, and furnaces 8-12 had been rebuilt during the mid and late 1950s with taller uptakes and single downcomers. As of 2013, number 8 is the oldest furnace left at Gary, accompanying three other, larger blast furnaces at that plant.