Happy Friday once again! Up today is a picture of the Riverview Apartments, sadly without any kind of explanation about exactly what has happened here….
On the back is a stamp dated March 24 1948, and a caption that reads: “RIVERVIEW APTS 951 SANDWICH ST WINDSOR” but nothing else…
A storm? An explosion? I see a fire escape twisted on the ground, may the wall just gave away? No idea.
However if you look at the Riverview today, you’ll notice that the top floor of the façade appears to have been repaired with a slightly different coloured brick.
Any ideas out there about this one?
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I enjoy keeping with Windsor's recent theme of exploding living quarters. Good call.
I've seen this picture before. I drive by this apartment almost daily. I've often wondered what happened.
It looks like such a nice building and the front entrance is beautiful.
wow !! I grew up on Crawford Ave and always seen this place never knew what happened to it...i remember the big old house next door until the rest home bought it out and demolished it back in the early 80's
The December 31, 1948 edition of the "The Windsor Daily Star" offers a possible explanation for the damage to this building. According to coverage of the year 1948 in review, there is a brief recounting of a March 19th incident entitled "Mile-a-Minute Winds Roar Through Windsor".
Some excerpts from the article:
"...and damage varied from twisting off a roof to bowling over a telephone pole..."
"...The downtown and riverfront areas suffered most severely from the heavy wind..."
Storm damage seems consistent with this photo as it doesn't appear to depict any fire damage or blown out windows that might accompany an explosion from within.
Not an explosion since the furniture in the exposed rooms is intact. Roof torn off as well as brick collapse suggests wind damage. Fire escape collaspe could have weakened the brickwork. Roof torn off on west side of building which is where winds usually originate from in Windsor.
Everything points to a major regional windstorm being the cause of the damage. The March 20, 1948 edition of "The Toledo Blade" devoted an article to the widespread havoc that included chimneys blown down, empty boxcars knocked off rails as far as a quarter-mile, trees and billboards toppled, etc...
Link: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=0-EpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9v8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3277,106816&dq=wind&hl=en
It's funny how the non-matching bricks don't follow the same pattern as the damage. They are more uniform. They must have disassembled and reclaimed as much as possible to make it uniform start for the new brick that was required. That's a lot of work, I'd imagine.