Brockville Museum #TBT – Brockville Smokestack Challenge

Brockville – For this week’s TBT the Brockville Museum is posting the Brockville smokestack challenge! How many can you identify?

Smokestacks are icons of industry – and Brockville has been home to a lot of factories. Smokestacks often stand out in a landscape and from a historian’s perspective, can help orient and date an old photograph. Several of our followers used some of Brockville’s iconic smokestacks to date last week’s #TBT post, which inspired us to pull together this compilation. Some of these will be pretty easy for many long-time residents, but some should be a bit trickier! Some are actually still around, while others are long gone. How many can you place?

We’ve probably missed a couple, but these are the ones we could find photographs for. Did you know we once had so many?

Okay, have you made your guesses… we’ll share the answers below. To learn more about some of these factories, visit our “Made in Brockville” virtual exhibit on our website. (Or visit our exhibit galleries!) You can also browse our collection database online and find histories of many of these places along with products once manufactured there.

Answer time…

• 1a: Smarts Foundry (today’s Hardy Park)
• 1b: Phillips Electrical Works (location of the new Swift Waters School)
• 1c: Canada Carriage Company (Park St. north side of the railway tracks)
• 1d: Stetson, and Wolthausen Hats (Park St. south side of the railway tracks)
• 2a: Orient Hosiery, later Black & Decker (Perth St. and Central Ave)
• 2b: Ault Milk (location of today’s Executive Condominium, next to the new Reynolds Park)
• 2c: General Milk (this stack is actually still there: Pearl St. and North Augusta Ave.)
• 2d: Procter & Gamble (now LeClerc, Centennial Rd. and California Ave.)
• 3a: Cossitt Manufacturing (picture taken where today’s Stewart Blvd. goes over the railway tracks at Brock St.)
• 3b: Brockville Psychiatric Hospital
• 3c: Cowan’s Dairy (Park St. at Amy St.)
• 3d: Brockville General Hospital

How many did you get? Which ones were the hardest?