Above is a photo taken yesterday, which shows several courses of brick have been removed, and some of the structural block behind it as well. What ever is going on, looks to be serious.
Here’s a shot of the same area from April, 2009. It appears that there was previous work done on this area of the building. Hopefully the building won’t be re-clad. *fingers crossed*
Does anyone out there know what they do in this building, to me it looks like they are redoing the brickwork above the roofline where it’s suseptible to the freeze thaw cycle after all these years these bricks would be flaking and its possible that they could fall, while driving down Drouillard I find myself looking at the painted buildings to see if the bricks are flaking off, one unheated building is in really bad shape.
i think besides being a moving company i also think it might be a cold storage of sorts…just guessing
Speaking of cold storage, back in the late sixties a high school chum offered me a one day job unloading a reefer boxcar of frozen lamb in this neighbourhood. An opportunity to earn pocket money for another kind of reefer. 20 or 40 lb boxes, can’t remember now (too much reefer?) Anyway, there was a railroad spur there, one of many in the area, as I recall(ETR?). The car was shunted right up against the warehouse loading door and we lumped that freight onto wooden pallets and a forklift took it into the deep freeze. Man, it was cold and I was sure glad when it finally ended. Don’t think it was Windsor Truck and Storage but it was certainly close by. I did a search for cold storage Windsor and came up with Windsor Freezer Services at 1518 Mercer, just south of Shepherd. Thought this might have been the place but when I headed out to Google street view all I saw was an empty lot, mercifully unpaved (grass good, asphalt bad) but pretty bleak nevertheless. Matter of fact, plenty of empty lots all around, no sign of any railroad having ever been there. Was it just a dream?
No dream, there actually was a (ETR?) spur line that ran parallel to Hanna across Howard, Mercer and McDougall before curving north to run parallel to Windsor Avenue. If you look at the Google satellite image there are ghosts of that line still visible.
I remember the line as a kid growing up in Windsor but I don’t remember when it was abandoned (1980’s maybe?)
It was abandonned in the early 90’s, JeffS. I grew up at Hanna and Elsmere, and remember the ETR fondly.
WIE, check this out…all you needed to do was look up!
http://goo.gl/maps/IUzPd
The ETR line that ran along Hanna was the “factory branch”, finished in 1912. A while ago, on wikimapia, I drew out the branch, which you can see here:
http://wikimapia.org/#lat=42.3013064&lon=-83.0206892&z=18&l=0&m=b
When the line crosses over itself on Mercer, the spur headed north east is the one that ran up to Windsor Freezer. If you take a look at the following streetview, you’ll see two trails in the gravel parking lot to the right. Under those trails lie the rails. Go a little further south, and you’ll see a freahly paved section of Mercer. Under there lies two sets of rails, and this is where the branch ran across Mercer. As a kid, I remember playing in an old, LARGE, green passenger car from what must have been from the 1920’s. The car was parked there for years, set on fire multipule times, and eventually, one day, I rode by on my bike to find an excavator ripping the poor old girl to peices.
http://goo.gl/maps/Lb86P
Didn’t add the last link lol
Oh…I ment to add. I’ve been able to watch the progress of work being done on WT&S from my building. I think it’s just repair work. A while ago, they had all the lettering down from the roof line, and about 6 feet of brick. It’s pretty much all back up. I don’t think we need fear the stucco!
I DO wish they’d refurbish that wonderful clock tower though.
Aaron – Yeah, up and back over my left shoulder. Confound this web navigation! Many thanks for your perceptive observations and fascinating work mapping the factory branch and pointing out the hidden rails of the ETR. Windsor Freezer Services looks awful. That metal cladding is about as ugly as stucco.
I too wish for the day those clock gears are once again in motion.
You’re welcome, WIE.
On a good note regarding the clock tower, I’m almost positive I saw that the west facing clock on the tower, the one that has all the glass smashed out, and has been like that for the past two decades, has recently been boarded up from the inside! I have to get a better look to be certain, but maybe this is a sign of restoration to come.
I would LOVE to see that clock face lit up at night, and actually telling time.
This is one of my favourite building’s in the city.
CLOCK TOWER UPDATE!!!
Good news everybody! The crane is gone, and there’s NO STUCCO! Just nice, refurbished lettering and good old brick and morter!