A while back I got an email from a reader who wanted to know a little something about the Canadian Bridge Company, another part of Windsor Industrial Heritage.
From the collection of Chris Edwards
The first batch of photos comes from the collection of Chris Edwards. Chris put together an exhibition on the Windsor works of Albert Kahn at the Art Gallery of Windsor, at the same time as my Windsor Modern Exhibition.
The building shown above was built in 1907, and was located on Walker Road. Today the Government Office (Immigration?) occupies the site.
From the collection of Chris Edwards
It was a nice looking structure, it almost reminds me of a school.
From the collection of Chris Edwards
In 1913, the office was expanded and another floor was added to the top of the building.
From the collection of Chris Edwards
You can see on these plans see the Customs Clearance stamp. Oddly the plans are dated, Feb. 21, 1913. While the customs stamp reads Feb. 25, 1912. Don’t tell me they were using a stamp with the wrong year on it for the first two months of 1913!
🙂
From the collection of Chris Edwards
As you can see the level of detail on the plans are outstanding. I could look at old blueprints for hours… They give you a great sense of the building as it was.
Above is a view of the Canadian Bridge Company from 1913. The company later became a division of the Dominion Steel and Coal Corportation which was dissolved in 1962 by Hawker Siddeley.
If you drive down St. Luke Street today, there are still parts of the plant still remaining in unaltered states.
My favourite parts are the massive steel overhead cranes in the yard.
Impressive parts of our industrial past. Anyone know if they are still used for anything?
The plant today is occupied by Valco Manufacturing, a division of Valliant Machine.
In Googling the Canadian Bridge Company, I came across a few interesting things:
The company, built the superstructure for the High Level Bridge in Edmonton
The historic St. Louis Bridge in St. Louis, Saskatchewan
The 1.6 km long High Level Bridge in Lethbridge, Alberta.
The company even got it’s own page on Structurae.de a online bridge and structure database from Germany.
And finally the one I found most interesting, the biography of Cornelius Langston Henderson, who was a design engineer for the Canadian Bridge Company from 1911 until 1958. Mr. Henderson graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1911. He was only the second African American to earn a Civil Engineer. Mr. Henderson unable to find work anywhere in the USA, found employment in Walkerville. He was a key engineer on both the Ambassador Bridge and Detroit Windsor Tunnel projects.
Anyone out there have any relatives who worked there? Anyone know when it closed?
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My Dad worked fro Canadian Bridge as a draftsman from about 1945 or so until the shut down in 1980. There was an white one story addition to the west of the original building that became the used office space and the original building was essentially storage. The lawn bowling greens the company built were between this building and the old Bank of Montreal building at the corner of Walker Road and Ottawa Street.
When they were winding down operations I was able to get some of the original drawings in ink on linen of some Welland Canal bridges and some blueprints of various railroad structures. I should have grabbed the many folders containing the drawings for the upgrading of the CPR Stoney Creek Bridge. I have forwards the urls to my Dad and maybe he can comment.
Canadian Bridge also built the old CKLW TV transmission tower that was on Riverside Drive and the original CKVR TV tower in Barrie that was destroyed when a plane hit it in 1977
gORD I REMEMBER THAT BAKERY YOU MENTIONED THEY HAD A RETAIL STORE AND YOU COULD BUY DAY OLD BREAD AND OTER BAKED GOOD FOR ALMOST NOTHING
Canadian Bridge Company of Walkerville also supplied the steel for the Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario 1924. Anyone know where I could get blueprints?
I work for valco mfg. I have 3 photos of this buiding from 1918 "the bomb shop" pdf file pics. I love old pics of windsor!!!
my dad worked in The Dominion Bridge Company in Toronto....for 12 years till 1977....great memories of that period...lot's of Italian worked there....please get in touch with me on my email address I know live in Italy.....R.B.
rb themapleleaf@libero.it
Hi Andrew
Fantastic site. I worked at the bridge in the 70's,both plants . I had just come out of Mike Haruks welding school & every project I worked on was massive.Those towers for Ont. Hydro were at least 6" across the base. We also prefabed a fishing tug that went to Peru, a smelter building for INCO in Sudbury. a 100 ton gantry crane for Hawkers iron foundry in Quebec,huge railway towers for C.N. but the most impressive were 2 I-beams for the Newfoundland railway ferry approach for C.N. They were 120'long, weighed 120 tons & floated in the ocean. They were loaded on special rail cars with extra flatbeds on either end & took 3 mo's to get to Nova Scotia.I was told that the load was too long to fit through some of the curves in Canada so the load went via the U.S. & utilized the Erie canal for part of the trip.I've been trying to track those beams down for yr's but no luck yet.
The cranes that ran on the rails outside plant 1 also ran inside the plant. As I recall there were also yard cranes that ran on tracks throughout the property. The Steel Workers Union went on strike in/70 & the company moved the machining division out of plant 1 by rail while they were walking in front of the building. The strikers couldn't do anything because the rails inside the plant were owned by the railroad.If any of your readers know where those BIG beams are call me at 780 642 8929 Thanks ED
My father's eldest brother installed some of the red hot rivets that went into the
Ambassador Bridge Structure ( now deceased Mr. Leo Filiault )
My first cousin's husband ( also deceased, worked at the Walkerville Plant, Mr. Joe Bellemore )
My father, John R. Stratford was with the Canadian Bridge Co, for many years. He was the foreman for the steel erection on many
jobs--the Thousand Island Intenational Bridge at Lansdowne, Ontario., which opened in 1938, the DEW Line (Early Warning Towers) Goose Bay Labrador, the North West Territories, the Supreme Court Building, Ottawa, Ontario. Ernie Pretty was the Superintendent then and one of the workers was Eddie Norris. My father built towers and bridges in many provinces.