Bathurst Gasometers

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Does anybody know when these gasometers were demolished?

Also, I think the bridge is the only remaining building from this photo.

 

[ShonTron]

No idea about the gasometers, but even the bridge was replaced, and the route over the railways realligned.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Maybe Enbridge Consumers' Gas will know?

Their website indicates that Consumers' phased out local production ( coal gas? ) and started importing natural gas from the U.S. by pipeline in 1954. In 1958 they started buying it from western Canada, by pipeline, and stopped buying from the U.S.

I've seen a 1949 aerial photo that shows a gasometer ( and a second similar building - purifier? condenser? - next to it ) at their Front and Parliament station. And another view, in 1967, shows only the taller building because the gasometer has been demolished.

 

[unimaginative2]

That's fascinating. There are a couple gasometers just north of King's Cross in London that are being carefully restored as major heritage sites. They'll be the centrepiece of a new development district.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Fakenham, the small town in Norfolk where my Mother lives, has the only complete, surviving town gasworks in England and Wales. It operates as a small museum, though I haven't been there.

The Consumers' Gas site at Parliament and Front was huge - the aforementioned round tower ( at least 15 storeys tall by the look of the photo ) which I don't think rose and fell, and the gasometer next to it, sat on that empty lot just north of the Distillery District and south of Front. The newly renovated Police Station was part of the complex, as was the theatre complex at Berkeley and Front and the Canadian Opera Company rehearsal and administrative buildings just to the north of it. I assume that the land between Berkeley and Parliament would have been part of it too.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

I'll email Consumers/Enbridge and see if they know. I suspect that I will not get much by reply, but I hope they surprise me.

Urban Shocker, they are both gasometers that rise and fall depending on the amount of gas within. If you look in the photo at the vertical supports, you will see a sort of swan-necked arm that goes form the top of the holder to the support. That has a wheel on the end of it that rides in a channel in or on the support. Condensers, cleaners, etc., did not have that as they were fixed height.

SeanTrans, the bridge is still there. When the alignment changed they pulled the bridge into the new alignment with a locomotive.

Fascinating stuff, had I seen taht photo elsewhere I would never have thought that it was of Toronto.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Perhaps the circular tower that doesn't appear to rise and fall on tracks ( in photographs I've seen of the Front and Parliament site ) was an earlier version of the gasometer? The two circular structures, at that site, were huge and dominated the downtown east skyline more than any sleek Distillery District point towers ever will.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

http://books.google.ca/books?id=32KmyGSweuoC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=toronto+gasometers&source=web&ots=kE6MKsTMZz&sig=14_UYw0t9bbMPELxOKkrm72v1Fk&hl=en

That shows a great photo of those gasometers and provides a bit of a wirte up about the Parliament site. You are quite right, those gasometers were gigantic, far larger than the ones by Bathurst and Front.

I cannot begin to imagine the smell and smoke produced by those gasworks, and the effect it had on the area.

 

[Urban Shocker]

The tallest gasometer ( which is the same height in both photos that I've seen, and looks as though it didn't move up and down in height ) was located on that circular base slightly to the left and in front of the larger gasometer in your photo. Perhaps it was under construction in 1930 when the pic. was taken? Your photo shows that there was another, smaller, gasometer between the two.

Distillery District, lower right.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

If the one you are thinking of didn't rise and fall, it would have to be the one under construction in that photo.

Haivng discovered a latent interest in gasometers via this thread, I shall have to see the museum in Fakenham when I'm in England next.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Yes, it was the one under construction. It was about a third taller than the "full" height of the one in the photo you posted, and dominated the view of the east end from downtown.

The building at Berkeley and Front, now used by the COC, was Purifying House N.2 built 1887-88. The Can Stage building to the south of it was a gas pumping station. The gas they produced was a mixture of coal gas and water gas.

Fakenham is near the north coast of rural Norfolk, in the middle of nowhere.

 

[adma]

Fakenham is near the north coast of rural Norfolk, in the middle of nowhere.

So is Hunstanton

 

[TKTKTK]

Yes, it was the one under construction. It was about a third taller than the "full" height of the one in the photo you posted, and dominated the view of the east end from downtown.

 

[Urban Shocker]

My goodness. There were two more gasometers - somewhere around Sherbourne by the look of it.

 

[TKTKTK]

My goodness. There were two more gasometers - somewhere around Sherbourne by the look of it.

You don't think those are the ones on Parliament? And the more distant ones are the Gasometers that were on Eastern & Booth?