424 Lisgar sits on the south side of the street, a block and a half west of Bank. I'm not a fan of painted brick but sometimes it makes you stop and look, and take a picture as I did, heading home from Massine's YIG. The pair of trees (maples? should have looked at the leaves) largely hide this building in summer — here, their bare branches emphasize its bilateral symmetry.
The foundation — real masonry by the looks of it — tends to put construction before 1910 while the mass, symmetry and lack of fussy brickwork look post-1900. We have evidence that the mansarded third floor is an add-on, and surely the cinder-block porch and iron balconies replace wooden originals.
#424 seems to have been a walk-up apartment for much of its life, though how it got its start is a bit murky. My copy of Goad 1888 (sheet 55, block 300) bears a glued-on bit from 1891 showing a squarish foundation (reassuringly labled "foundation") with a smaller, squarish rear extension. The lot bears the alternate address of #78, since abandoned, indicating a previous numbering scheme that may have commenced at Bank Street rather than by the Rideau Canal as it does today.
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| Goad 1888 amended '91, note #78 between 418 and 434 |
The Might Directory for 1901 lists an unfinished building next to a vacant lot. Neither are numbered, either would date completion to after Victoria's death in January of that year, though as we have seen, someone had ideas about at least ten years previous.
Might 1909 lists four tenants. Three years later, Goad 1912 depicts the two-storey, brick-on-wood "Lisgar Apartments" with a flat roof and rear light-well, in keeping with a four unit building, though without the rear extension shown in the 1891 drawing. And yet, that same year Might lists only one occupant, a Miss Ruby E. Legendre. This makes my head hurt.
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| #78 renumbered, the two-storey "Lisgar Apartments" — note the light-well |
Ruby is still alone the next year. Then, from 1914 to 1916 Might lists the six unit "Camille Apartments" with Mrs. Letitia Legendre (Ruby's widowed mom most likely) living in unit 1. Does this mean that the third floor was added between 1912 and 1914 or was the Camille stowing two extra tenants in the basement? I have no idea.
Nor did I find much about the Legendres, apart from the fact that Ruby and her sister Jessie were active in the YWCA circa 1900 and participated in that organization's "Band of Hope". Ruby sang and Jessie played piano and organ. Musical training suggests there was some money in the family, though I can't identify the father with any certainty. I do have reason to believe (public school mentions) that Ruby was in her early 20s by the time she lived at #424 in 1912 and '13. My tentative theory is that Mr. Legendre had planned a family home at the address. Construction was halted by his death until Mrs. Legendre, with the help of her young adult daughters, reconfigured the plan as an income property. But of course, this is guesswork.
The six-unit Camille appears in Might at least as late as 1928 — I have no records for 1929 to 1940. During WWII and for some years after, rooms were often rented out within apartments as was common practice. I'm guessing that the porch/balcony treatment dates to the 1950s.
One oddity — I haven't been behind the building in person, but Google seems not to show the rear light-well indentation from Goad 1912. If it were me, I would have filled it in when I added the third floor.
