Nelson Coke and Gas Co. Ltd. - Nelson, BC - 1907 - Vintage Ad Locations on Waymarking.com

As the name would suggest, the Nelson Coke and Gas Works are in Nelson, quite a distance from Greenwood. Given their product line of paints, coal tar, pitch and preserving oils, one would suppose that new and booming mining towns such as Greenwood would provide a ready market.

The business of the Coke and Gas Works was to import coal and export refined products, including coke, tar, roofing pitch, creosote, preserving oils, paint and tar paper. As such, its location adjacent to the railway, for economical transportation, was a given. The gasworks part of the name came from its business of supplying the town with coal gas for heating and cooking. The arrival of natural gas pipelines in 1957, however, spelled the end for the gasworks.

The remaining two buildings of the Coke and Gas Works are at addresses 610 and 614 of Railway Street in Nelson. The buildings are very substantial, and also quite striking, having been constructed with very thick walls of heavy stone in 1900. These buildings were the first two to be designated as heritage structures in the city in or shortly after 1978.

The remaining two buildings of the Coke & Gas Works have been restored as City of Nelson Heritage Buildings and house various businesses, such as a U Brew store, a veterinarian and other offices.

Nelson Coke and Gas

Built in 1900, the Nelson Coke and Gas Works, together with the Canadian Pacific Railway station (1901) claimed this flatland area of Nelson for its industrial sector. The location allowed the company to conveniently import its coal and export its products (coke, tar, roofing pitch, creosote, preserving oils, paint and tar paper) via continentally-connected rail lines, and to utilize nearby Cottonwood Creek for the water required in the gasification process.

With the establishment of the gas works, which involved contracting with the Economical Gas Apparatus Construction Co. Ltd. of Toronto and London England, the city had developed a critical piece of infrastructure that would power its aspirations as the economic centre for the Kootenay region. The new technology involved the delivery of residential and commercial gas by means of a low pressure system via a ‘gasometer’ structure. With the required pressure increased in the uphill areas of the city by decreasing the pipe diameters, fuel for heating and cooking was provided throughout the “Queen City”.

Designed and engineered by L.L Merrifield and David Morris, the Gas Works building complex is important for its use of indigenous materials including red brick and granite from the quarry near the Hall Mines Smelter. The masonry construction also ensured that the extraction machinery was protected in a structure that was both safe and impervious to fire. Placed by masons into irregular coursings to create up to two-foot thick walls, the granite structure is valued for the creative use of masonry which relates materially and visually to the major cultural and commercial buildings in the city core, while exemplifying British Columbia’s early industrial architecture.
From the Nelson Heritage Register, 2011, number 15, page 28