L. A. Armstrong Apple Warehouse

The L. A. Armstrong Apple Warehouse, photographed by David Othen, April 1979. The six windows on the right were for the packing room. The two windows on the left at the corner were for the warehouse manager and accountant.

L. A. Armstrong Apple Warehouse, Windsor

Mile 31.51 from Windsor Junction on the Halifax Subdivision

Facing the Windsor Station
Insulated Apple Warehouse
Wooden construction
Capacity: 10,000 barrels of apples^[1]

History

The warehouse was built in 1906 by the Lewis Albert Armstrong and Sons Apple Exporting Company. It was a wooden second generation apple warehouse built with wooden knees and iron tensioning rods.^[2] For many decades it employed a seasonal packing crew every fall to pack apples delivered from Windsor area orchards which were loaded on boxcars for shipment to Halifax from September until April. One of two apple warehouses in downtown Windsor (along with the B. Sexton Warehouse to the westt), its location across from the Windsor Station platform ensured that it often appeared in the background of photographs of locomotives photos in Windsor. The warehouse became more prominent in later years when it face the access road to Highway 101 near the Windsor Tim Hortons. The warehouse became a factory outlet shop for the nearby Windsor Wear (Nova Scotia Textiles) mill in the 1990s. It became something of a Windsor icon in its final years due to large mural depicting a railway scene which incorporated the warehouse windows into the artwork. The warehouse was acquired by the Windsor and Hantsport Railway who used the spur to park railyway track maintenance box cars and track repair equipment. However, following the mothballing of the railway in 2011, the warehouse sat unused and unmaintained, racking up $95,766 in unpaid taxes owed by the Windsor and Hantsport Railway. The warehouse was purchased at a forced tax sale by the Town of Windsor with hopes that it would encourage commercial development by the river. The town judged that the warehouse was beyond repair and approved demolition in October 2019.^[3] It was demolished on November 19, 2019.^[4]