This former power station at 1057 Walker Road was designed and built by the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario in 1914.
It was known as Hydro Sub Station Number 1, and was in service until 2002 or so, when it was decommissioned by EnWin.
The blueprints for the building, refer to it as the “Windsor & Walkerville Municipal Transformer Station”.
This building is one of a long line of attractive and architecturally interesting Hydro Substations.
After nearly 90 years of service in supplying power to the surrounding area (and before that, the Town of Walkerville), the building was declared as a surplus property, and luckily the property was purchased by someone with vision, and not one of the surrounding land speculators who have done nothing to improve the Walker Road corridor.
The building as yo can see has been rehabbed and re adapted for office use. The building is today home to a local architectural firm called Design Studio g+G Architects, you can check out their website here.
One of the coolest features of the building is this original cast iron spiral staircase.
A view back towards the main floor from the top of the spiral staircase.
The building contains three floors including the basement. The second floor is currently empty and you can really get a feel for building by looking at the brick, steel (from the Canadian Bridge Company in Walkerville), and poured concrete, it is truly an amazing building.
Finally this graffiti is located on the ceiling on the second floor. Keep in mind this is a good 20 feet up there… So W. Scott, if you’re out there, I hope you enjoyed your nap 32 years ago…
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What a beautiful spiral staircase.
another place one wonders about and thanks to you we now know. And a grand piano??? Is it used I wonder
I believe it is, the architect who owns the place, Jason Grossi is also a composer.
Glad to see it being in use, my question though would be, how do you get any furniture up to the 2nd floor or basement? The spiral staircase doesn’t look that wide…unless you buy some Ikea furniture and move it piece by piece.
Classy!
This is what I always thought an Architectural Firm’s office should be, open, spacious feeling, high ceilings, bright and warm surroundings. I don’t know of any other firms in Windsor that have offices that feel like old lofts, But I know this is the kind of setting many architects and Designers in Toronto would have for an Office.
Being a power station, it must have had equipment on the upper floor. Probably there is a freight entrance, or perhaps an open window/hoist arrangement? The staircase is not suitable even to carry a large box up it. Very tight. Nice building, though. The money isn’t wasted on new substations. Back then the company understood that the building was a reflection on the company, so money was spent purely to make it attractive, and durable.
gorgious!!
CDM….i beleive there’s a firm that has converted an old church on ouellette between hanna and shepard that has done the same thing. i’ve seen pictures but i don’t know where……here i would imagine.
also – Andrew, ever take piucs of the sub station on walker by the van plant? that’s a beaut too.
CDM – here’s the link
http://internationalmetropolis.com/?p=762
and, my above was supposed to say “pictures” lol
Aaron
I did know about J.P. Thomson adaptive reuse of an old church. I heard about that two years ago. I just like the look of the old industrial space with exposed brick, hardwood floors and an unfinished ceiling.
I do think that J.P. Thompson and associates did a nice job renovating the church.
ah,
i agree about the reuse of the industrial buildings and exposed brick. i’d love to turn the old sub station across from by old house into a home. that’s on here too…..hanna and elsmere.
Aaron, have you lived there a long time? I seem to remember an IGA store on Hanna E. back in the early 70’s…
ive driven past many times and been curious about what it looks like inside.. thanks for the look andrew. i think this is a great office and its nice to see this kinda of development in the area!
I lived in Toronto for many years and have seen many buildings downtown where there old brick and beams were exposed, this included shops, restaurants, offices and condominiums. At the beginning of this year I visited a new area of Toronto call the Distillery District.
Follow the Link http://www.travelandtransitions.com/interviews/distillery_district.htm
This is a great model of adaptive reuse in the Downtown Toronto area of old industrial buildings. I wish Windsor could adapt with some of the old Factories and Warehouses around the city.
cdm… too bad we lost a few good ones on walker just recently!
CDM- I have also been to the distillery district a couple of times…most recently this past summer. My sister lives in T.O and she brought me there the first time. Man, was I floored at what they turned it into! It looks as though you stepped through time and not much has changed. The buildings are beautiful and the roads are still the old brick that were probably the original streets. Glad I took some pictures this summer of the place!
Wow, isn’t it amazing how much more interesting Windsor’s old architecture was compared with the crap we put up today. I miss the more urban feel Windsor had a generation ago and the colourful characters you would meet every day.
Awesome re-use. Love the staircase!
there’s a ‘transformed’ mini power station at 1086 Lauzon near Little River, home to Prime Lighting Design. It’s particularly striking at night.
Some time ago, I posted that the former St Thomas the Apostle Church on Edgar near Lauzon was under the wrecking ball, but it’s actually being revamped to a funeral home.
On behalf of our studio, we’d like to thank Andrew for coming out to document what we have done to this great old structure in our city. He is the first and only person from the Heritage Committee to visit or even show interest in our efforts and we are grateful. This building required a significant amount of financial resources and design effort to preserve the design intent of the original and we will continue to do our best to do what is necessary to maintain this. We had hoped that by putting our pocket-books, design and craftsmanship skills to work we would be able to perhaps instigate other property owners to also follow. We are still hopeful that this will be the result. Many architects claim to do and be restoration experts and infuse contemporary concepts but very few actually do it or with their own finances. There is still much more work to do regarding restoration in addition to overall development but this will take time so please be patient with us – we do all the work with our own hands, at least so far.
We are also very grateful to Andrew for documenting the value of our built heritage especially that of mid-century architecture which is often left out because it is not as “cutesy” as the visual turn-of-the-century buildings. His ability to see the significant value of this generation of designers is significant and preserving this is crucial as many of the details used needs servicing quicker than some of the massive older structures that we tend to instantly define as heritage. This is especially true of some of the flat coal tar pitch roofs, slender frames and hyperbolic concrete shells that were somewhat experimental and daring. We continue to look forward to seeing what hidden gems Andrew finds in our city. Thanks Andrew.
great job on the studio gC. i think we all appreciate what you’ve done for this great old power station.
drop by and post more often, we’d love to have you and your team here!
The windows on the second floor look a little small – if they dropeed them down a little so they matched the first floor windows, the second storey space would be just as amazing as the first without compromising the look of the building.
Amazing article Andrew!! This one escaped the wreckers ball, it’s a wonder that more ‘business’ people can’t do this sort of thing with the historical buildings in Windsor.