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

6 Water Street, Windsor, Nova Scotia, facing the Windsor Station platform

Mile 31.51 from Windsor Junction on the Halifax Subdivision

Track Location: southern waterfront spur, loading doors 10, 11 and 12
Insulated Apple Warehouse, wooden frame 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. L. A. Armstrong (1861-1941) was a farmer from Falmouth with extensive orchards. He also had a second and smaller apple warehouse in Falmouth. His Windsor warehouse was a wooden, second-generation apple warehouse built with wooden knees and iron tensioning rods.^[2] It had typical apple warehouse features: three track-side doors, roof and wall vents to ensure it remained frost-proof and a row of big windows for the packing room. It also had some unusual features: a row of small three-pane windows to illuminate the loft floor where empty barrels were stored and a manager and accountant's office that was integrated into the warehouses instead of being attached. 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 west), its location across from the south end of the old Windsor Station platform ensured that it often appeared in the background of locomotive photos taken in Windsor. The warehouse became more noticeable in later years after the construction of Highway 101 when it became prominent in the view from the highway and overpass road near the Windsor downtown 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 painted by artist Ken Spearing in 2003^[3] which depicted a railway scene and incorporated the warehouse windows into the artwork. The warehouse was acquired by the Windsor and Hantsport Railway who used the spur to park railway 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.^[4] It was demolished on November 19, 2019.^[5]