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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Those photos bring back a lot of memories. I worked there during summer vacations and full time for a while after I finished high school. Valco Mfg. used to be Plant 2. The steel fabricated here produced huge hydro electric towers. Sitting on a stack of steel under those overhead cranes, I watched huge plumes of smoke rising over Detroit and learned from someone with a radio that there was rioting in the streets over there.
Plant 1 was separated from Plant 2 by a feeder rail line. Here I worked on a riveting gang putting pieces together for a bridge being built for Expo 67 in Montreal. I even worked in the office building for two weeks when the janitor went on vacation. It really did look like a school, didn't it?
Wow! Great find! Thanks to you and Chris from Walkerville Publishing for giving us such info.
I have a picture in my office of workers making the plate steel that was used in building the Ambassador Bridge at that very plant. Courtesy of Chris once again.
Compare that beautiful building, and most other older gov't buildings with the turd that sits on the site now. What a shame.
Of interest is the awnings over most windows back then. In these days of the "green movement" I wonder why more offices don't incorporate these cloth awnings anymore? They sure do cut down on air conditioning costs when used on the warmer but not extremely hot days.
Your right Andrew, Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency occupy the old Canadian Bridge Co. office site today. An ugly building now.
How about those two large steel structures that used to stand near the corner of Walker and Ottawa? You could see them from miles away. Were they in any way related to the Canadian Bridge Co./ Dominion Steel? I always thought they were strange.
Good story Andrew! This is another story that reminds us on how the city has lost its industrial based and diversified industries. I will not speculate on how the city got to this state...
Dominion Forge, although auto related was another heavy industry that 'hit the road'.
I recall driving down Walker Road in the 50s as a young lad in tow by my mom who was going shopping on Ottawa Street.... when this street was a popular shopping district and before the K-marts and shopping centres came into being. Walker Road had many industries.... including a pharmaceutical plant. Where have all these industries gone.... and why?
I remember those two large steel structures as well. I was always told that they were used to build the bridge, but I dont know how accurate that is... They were a sort of landmark, letting you know what part of the city you were in. One looked like a "T" and the other, if my memory serves me, looked like an upside down lower case "j", and it was a bit smaller.
is plant 1 still around? or demolished
My father worked for Canadian Bridge from approx. 1935 to 1975. Sometime after his retirement, the company ceased to exist and pensions were transfered to annuities. The structures at the end of Ottawa street were built to test the transmission towers that the company built. I understand that they were built with some financial assistance from senior government and this was the reason that it took some time for them to be demolished.
Does anyone know where one could find drawings of communication towers built by Canadian Bridge?
Nate...if you know anyone at Hydro One, in engineering, there are reams of them available. You wouldn't be in the tower industry...would you....VHF perhaps?