The Waterton and Welwyn Apartments

408-414 Albert, at Bay, looking east

I'm grateful to Chris Ryan and his fascination with the history of Ottawa apartment buildings — I doubt I could have otherwise found names for these two. That's the Waterton at 408 on the left and the Welwyn, 414 on the right.

Newspaper mentions of #408 go back at least as far as 1936 — R. J. Bishop of apartment 12 wins $10 in the Journal's "Mickey Mouse Addition Contest" — indicating construction in or before that year. #414 first appears in 1920 (housemaid wanted, apply evenings), then in a 1923 obit (Andrew Ferguson Smith), both suggesting a former single-family house at that latter address. Goad (1912) confirms our suspicion.

Here we see a Victorian-style brick house with a generous side-yard, set on a desirable corner lot. It's surrounded by more cheaply-built singles and rows. Indeed, Goad shows a near-identical configuration at least as far back as 1888. The Woodburn Dirctory for 1884 has no listing for the lot but 1890 gives us "Private grounds" followed immediately by "414 Henderson Alex A physician[,] Garrow Alexander M D". Okay, one family, two doctors, whatever — construction between '84 and '88. For its part, GeoOttawa shows the old house in place until at least as late as 1928.

Given the above dates and their identical designs, the Waterton and Welwyn were likely built at the same time, somewhere between 1928 and 1936, on a space that had been held open by a house and lot atypically large for the block.

The many brick-on-wood houses (yellow bordered with pink) shown on Goad's "block 261" above are testament to Ottawa's rapid growth in the years following 1857, the year that Queen Victoria chose our city as Canada's capital. Often, these cookie-cutter singles and short rows were built simply of wood. Many of the singles still stand, now sheathed in vinyl siding. In some cases, tracts of such housing would be declared slums, notably in the 1960s.

It's thus a paradox to find oft-repeated instances where a large and solidly-built house is torn down to make room for a more modern structure while the humble wooden abodes surrounding it are left standing. Such is the case here. After the block's initial buildup, the large brick house at the corner of Albert and Bay would be bulldozed (or whatever they used) for a pair of trendy inter-WW walk-ups, while aerial photos show that several houses on the east end of the block persisting until the mid-sixties. Only one 19th Century house, 388 Albert, still stands, though I wonder for how much longer.