Firestarter

Firecrackers were imported from Macau, Hong Kong and Guangdong (Canton) China — (image source).

Are you old enough to remember when Victoria Day was called "Firecracker Day"? If so, you probably remember firecrackers themselves. I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to arm children with incendiary devices, letting them run wild in the streets to blow things (and each other) up.  Remarkably, this was the norm until 1972 when Canada outlawed this kiddie-dynamite. I've found a news story from 1964 set during the lead-up to that year's shenanigans. It describes an event of the sort that would provoke the eventual ban.

From the Wednesday, May 6 1964 edition of the Ottawa Journal...

41 Homeless: Probe Nanny Goat Hill Fire, Suspect Children Started It

City fire investigators suspect children may have started the raging fire which swept through seven homes at the base of Nanny Goat Hill during the supper hour Tuesday. Forty-one persons, including 18 children, were left homeless after fire destroyed four houses and gutted another three on Lorne and Primrose Avenues.

Four houses on Lorne Avenue, numbers 50, 54, 56 and 58 were destroyed. Numbers 54 and 56 were two-storey brick homes, number 50 was stucco and 58 was a wooden frame house. The top storey at 109 Primrose Avenue, a two-storey brick[*] dwelling was gutted and the back rooms of a wooden frame tenement at 111 and 113 Primrose were gutted [...]

The homes border on land marked for NCC expropriation in LeBreton Flats. However, the exact area is one considered some time ago by the city for urban redevelopment. Exactly where and exactly how the fire started has not been determined, but fire officials and police say they have reason to believe that children playing with firecrackers may have caused the fire [...]

More than 50 firefighters from five stations under Deputy Fire Chief Alex McFadden battled the wildly spreading blaze for two hours. Mrs. Arthur Latimer, of 113 Primrose, said she phoned the alarm shortly after 5 p.m. when a young boy came running to tell her there was a fire in her garage [...]

This photo shows 109 Primrose, the house described by the Journal has having its top storey "gutted". The ornate brickwork parapet seems to have escaped damage — or does it post-date the fire? Goad maps and aerial photos suggest that the side yard was never built on. House and yard sit inside the elbow of lower Lorne and lower Primrose. I took the photo from the stairway leading down from the intersection of their upper counterparts. (Lower Primrose west of Booth was originally called "Maple", in keeping with the adjacent tree-themed street names — Spruce, Elm, Cedar etc.) Might (1901) lists Benjamin Guilmont, a watchman for the Victoria Foundry (Bridge St., Lebreton Flats), living at 109 Primrose.

Before the stairway was built, upper and lower Lorne were connected by a steep, narrow roadway running north down the cliff. In 1939, the Belgian-born Ottawa painter Henri Masson depicted this intersection in oils. We can see the road between the Lornes, a dirt ramp held in place by massive stone blocks, a stepped wooden sidewalk hugging the retaining wall opposite. A sign on a utility pole warns us of the steep grade ahead. Originally (Goad 1912), both lower Lorne and lower Primrose dead-ended against the base of the cliff — the empty side-yard likely served as a convenient shortcut between the two.

image via Urbsite, see detailed article here

The rear east side of 109 Primrose is visible on the left of the painting. The chimney has since been repositioned. If the house in the middle looks yellowish, that's because it's made of wood. 58 Lorne was destroyed in the 1964 fire and eventually replaced by a brick building of like height.

*     *     *

This corner of the Flats just below Nanny Goat Hill is part of an older fire-related story. Shortly
after the Great Ottawa-Hull Fire of April 1900, the Charles Goad Company produced a map showing the extent of the conflagration. I reproduce a section of it here...

We can see how the fire, which began in Hull, was driven southward by the wind, through the lumberyards of the Chaudiere island group, across Lebreton Flats and through then-Rochesterville and Bayswater, where it stayed west of Division, now Booth Street. But look at where the flames crossed lower Victoria/Empress, licking the base of Nanny Goat cliff before skirting the stone face toward the west and the south. On its way, the fire engulfed block 323, shown as having all-wood construction and including our lower Lorne and Primrose intersection. Without Nanny Goat Hill blocking the fire, it could have torn into the very heart of Centretown.

*Goad (1912) shows 109 Primrose as brick veneer (on three sides only). "Brick" in the Journal article would describe the external appearance of the house — I'm betting, for example, that 50 Lorne wasn't actually made of stucco. Assuming that #109 was built immediately after the "Great" fire, it's good to see it such good shape after that of '64.

Queen of the Cliff....

...Empress of the Escarpment

A "steep hill partly wooded" aptly describes this stretch of the Nanny Goat Hill cliff, seen here cutting diagonally across the southeast corner of Goad's sheet 49, dated January 1901. The date bears a coincidental significance — it was on January 22 of that very year that Queen Victoria died at the age of 81, ending a reign of 63 years and 7 months. Here, we are shown Victoria (the avenue) leaping from the cliff to a landing on the southern edge of Lebreton Flats, a respectable drop of some 14 metres or 46 feet.*

Victoria Avenue would be renamed "Empress" later in the same decade. I don't have the exact date for the change but a newspaper mention (property sale, "unobstructable view") puts it no later than 1907. Given that Victoria adopted the title "Empress of India" in the spring of 1876, a 20th Century act of recognition seems oddly belated. I can only guess that "Empress" was chosen to dispel confusion between the avenue and downtown's Queen Street, Queen Victoria Street (now simply "Victoria", in New Edinburgh) and the oft-misspelled and mispronounced Vittoria Street just west of Parliament Hill.

Goad's innocent-looking two-word notation in the lower right corner of our image raises interesting questions about this part of our city. "Burnt District" refers to the great Ottawa-Hull Fire of April 1900, less than a year before this map was prepared. What (if any) role did the cliff serve as a firebreak? What houses were destroyed and how were they rebuilt?

An iconic piece of brickwork dominates the right-hand side of this map. The signature angled wings of the "House of Mercy" Maternity Hospital still stand, now the oldest part of the St. Vincent hospital complex. Most of the smaller houses shown here have since been demolished, though a pair of buildings flanking the north side of Primrose at Empress remain.

85 Primrose Avenue

Coloured blue (for stone) on the map, 85 Primrose is labeled "convent". Its rank and file windows befit the conformity and anonymity of its one-time residents. The building is now Annex E of the Bruyère Research Institute. Oddly, I can find no discussions of heritage status for this building.

69 Primrose Avenue

Goad portrays 69 Primrose as a solid-brick "two-and-a-half", which largely agrees with what we see today, allowing for a few renovations. In 1901 this was the home of one Richard Lester "bidr", by which I think the Might Directory meant "bldr". The address is now associated with the Champlain Hospice Palliative Care Program.

Empress Avenue continues north for a short distance past these two buildings, looking very much like a dead end. On close inspection however, this cul de sac marks the top of a staircase wending down the cliff-side to a final block of the avenue, one of "Hidden Ottawa's" delightful features.

Another bit of renaming — "Maria" at the top of the map was the original name for Laurier Avenue West, shown here likewise leaping, as it were, over the cliff. The original footpath down the slope is long-gone. Instead, Slater now hugs the base of the cliff to a point where it joins the western limb of Albert Street. Thus the Empress is reunited with her lamented lost love, Prince Albert.

*Victoria (the Queen) did not leap over a cliff. She met her end with quiet dignity, in bed at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, attended by her son and successor King Edward VII, her eldest grandson the Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, and her little dog Turi, the Pomeranian.

 “I am his Highness' Dog at Kew. Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?”

— Alexander Pope

Queen Victoria, 1900

42 Primrose Avenue

on the Southeast corner of Arthur

This little charmer does a good job of hiding behind its trees and shrubbery in summer, which is a shame for us. I believe this is what's called a "four-square" plan. They appeared in the US in the 1890s and were popular through the 1910s and 20s. Many Ottawa examples are smaller than their American counterparts and often dispense with the full-width front verandah typical of the style. Some four-squares (if indeed that is the correct term) in Old Ottawa East/South are positively tiny.

Goad 1912 shows an older house in this spot facing Arthur, scrunched up next to #9 (extant) so this one replaces the original structure. #42 doesn't appear in Might 1923, so it would have been built during or after that year.

38 Primrose Avenue

The Nanny Goat Plateau features houses in a potpourri of styles. Sometimes the same thing can be said for individual houses. I don't know how much, if any of the original structure exists here, but occupancy of the lot dates at least as far back as 1875 (J. Peterkin carpenter, per Woodburn Directory). Goad shows a house of like configuration, brick-on-wood, one-and-a-half storeys in 1888.

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.

480 Somerset West

I know, I know — it looks lopsided as hell. That's what I get for trying to center a symmetric building that has an asymmetric element tacked on to one side, as they both sit on a gentle slope rising toward Nanny Goat Hill. Live and learn...

There are still a few of the original brick houses on this stretch of Somerset, so this building sticks out nicely. Institutional from the get-go, #480 demonstrates how a coat of paint and some colour-coordinated trim can make a cinder-block box look like a converted Kingdom Hall. Sadly (or not) the low-relief door and window treatments recede under that wash of ecru.

So, if not a house, what then? An office now, obviously — that Co-operators sign looks like it came with the place though we know it didn't. Surrounded by narrow, single-family houses, 480's flat roof and basement-stairway enclosure show up clearly on geoOttawa's 1958 aerial photo. The width of the lot makes me wonder if 480 replaced two old houses, but Goad 1912 (sheet 55 block 373) shows a "contractor's yard" with wooden sheds and empty space between houses 474 and 490.

Ottawa's Golden Age of Cinder-Block was a post-WWII phenomenon, so that gives us a 13 year window of likely construction, from war's end in '45 to the aerial photo-op of '58 — Can we hone that date? Time to hit the newspapers...

...and we hit pay dirt with an Ottawa Journal article from the summer of 1948.

Later mentions cite the "No. 2 Health Centre" as one of four built around the same time, in response to the post-war baby boom.

A January 1954 Journal spread (and a great excuse for half a page spread of cute baby photos) describes an afternoon's DPT vaccination clinic at #480 while a piece from '58 mentions a "Salk vaccine" (polio jab) clinic. When it opened, #2 Health Centre was in the vanguard of community walk-ins designed to ease the burden on emergency rooms — by the 1970s it was focused (with a certain irony) on family planning, viz a bizarre October 6 1971 article opening with this jaw-dropper, emphasis mine...

"Parents protesting a lack of day-care facilities in Centre Town Tuesday were told "this is a family planning clinic — if you'd come here before, you wouldn't have this problem."[ouch!]

The problem was 11 infants and children and their parents who camped in the basement of the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Health Unit office at 480 Somerset Street West Tuesday for 10 hours.

The protesters, members of the year-old Bronson area day-care co-operative said that they would remain in the basement until either their demands [adequate daycare in a permanent location] were met or they were removed bodily..." — Sandra Woods, Ottawa Journal

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where our heads were at in the '70s. The Journal indicates that #480 continued as a clinic until at least 1979 (the daily ceased publication in 1980), after which date I sort of loose interest — although the row houses to the west are worth looking at. I remember Octopus Books and later(?) Thuna health food store, which moved and morphed into Herb & Spice. I retain a mental picture of a young Jeff Sugarman standing shirtless in the doorway, telling two (female) Jehovah's Witnesses (regarding religion) that "my body is my temple". Okay, you had to be there ;-)

424 Lisgar Street

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.

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.

#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.

388 Albert Street

The Albert/Lyon/Slater/Bay block (#261 per Goad, sheet 44) was roughly half built-upon by 1878 — with small-to-medium houses, most of wood, a few brick-on-wood. The original #388 was a wooden one-and-a-half, almost certainly front-gabled. It had a rear summer kitchen with rear sheds attached. Ten years later Goad would depict the same house as a two-storey, with sheds reaching back to the rear property line.

By 1912, Goad shows the house in its present configuration — a two-and-a-half-storey gambrel with a two-storey front bay window and two-storey flat-roofed rear extension, all brick-veneered. The boxy front room is a later, cringe-worthy add-on. It's likely that the present house incorporates the original 19th Century structure.

The A.S. Woodburn Directory for 1875 (pg. 19) notes "Sparks George, laborer" at this address — was he related to Nicholas? By 1884, Woodburn lists "Sparks Abraham, of Sparks & Edey, carpenters and builders". They sound like they could do renos.

The 1875 date gives the house (in whatever form) an occupancy history of at least 143 years. It's now one of only three buildings (all domestic) left on an otherwise empty block. Like they say, "Watch this space" — it just might do tricks.

See Good Eats here.

Oh Hey, it's Another Map

With my left foot on the mend I've finally been able to scope out the neighbourhood in person. And with a fresh Borg implant in my right eye I can actually make out the contour lines on geoOttawa's interactive map of the city — hence the following...

This map covers much of same area as Goad's did in the previous post. The brown contour lines are calibrated in metres above sea level (ASL) — all contours, including the light brown "minor" lines, are two metres apart. As always, click on the image to view large.

You can see two yellow patches on the map. They don't exactly match the yellow areas on Goad's map but they are related. The lower patch is that part of Nanny Goat Hill which rises beyond 80 metres ASL.  The upper patch is Parliament Hill, where the elevation reaches the 80 metre mark just north of Wellington Street — think of the embankments directly behind the stone and iron fence. Three minor contours looping across the Parliamentary front lawn confirm that the Centre Block is built on an 86 metre ASL plateau. No other ground on this map reaches, let alone exceeds an 80 metre elevation.*

The red triangle demarks this walker's subjective impression of all that is NGH, its shape roughly echoing the "yellow tongue" we saw in the last post. The lower right corner of this triangle sits  at the northwest corner of Dundonald Park, where a gentle rise that began near Bank Street flattens off noticeably. The top corner, as we've already seen, sits at the junction of Bronson and Laurier Avenues. On the west... well, that cliff is hard to ignore. And as to the bottom left corner, things do start to drop away somewhat around Empress and Arthur — by the time you reach Somerset and Booth, it's all downhill with a vengeance.

Oh, and I think I figured out where that "Nanny Goat Hill" restaurant whatever thing used to be, back in the '70s — it looked bigger back then.

*For a list of significant Ottawa elevations, check out Wikipedia here.

Before the Bowery

The Bowery, promotional image via Richcraft

Less than a week after I moved into my new apartment, a flyer landed in my mailbox suggesting that I move again, into a newer, larger and more prestigious building. Prestigious, edgy, hip, whatever — what is one to make of a condo tower named after one of New York City's most notorious skid rows, lately gentrified? I checked out the flyer (which included the above rendering), noted the floor-to-ceiling windows (I'll bet the view is awesome) and realised that I could move in immediately if I withheld condo fees and stopped eating.

The Bowery (from Frisian/Dutch bouwerij = a building) by Richcraft — "NYC come to Ottawa" — sits at 255 Bay Street, facing west. Its somewhat T-shaped footprint straddles the block between Gloucester and Nepean Streets. I first noticed the site excavation in the spring of 2015 as I cycled past en route to Tech Wall. Construction was well under way the following year.

Architect's renderings like the one above can be forgiven some license when they portray a building's surroundings. In this case, a bit of adjoining built heritage has been glossed over. Notice the shrubby trees tucked into the indent at the base of the tower. A similar clump is hinted at on the far side of the tower's main entrance. Neither planting exists, but something older has been preserved in their stead.

Here's a photo of the southeast corner of Bay and Gloucester, followed by the northeast corner of Bay and Nepean.

Bayscorner Grocery, 245 Bay St.

Ricardo's Pizza, 267 Bay St.

Cosmetic details aside, they're like peas at either end of the same pod. Were these two stores built at the same time? Were they the first permanent structures on this piece of land? And were they both purpose-built as "corner" stores?* Let's see what the records have to say.

*     *     *

The earliest Goad Maps at my disposal appear to date from 1878 — or at least a sheaf of undated individual sheets have been tipped into a folder labeled "1878". The block bounded by Bay, Gloucester, Nepean and Lyon (then "Sally"**) is found on sheet #42. As of the assumed date, Goad shows the block halfway built-up with simple houses, a mix of singles, doubles and rows, some of wood, some of brick, and a few brick-on-woods. One-and-a-half and two-storey construction is the norm. A few houses have simple front verandahs, most have summer kitchens out back, and beyond that, a tangle of wooden stables and sheds. I see none of the Victorian turrets, conservatories and cross-gables that would signal wealth or prestige. Those houses were built further north and closer to the cliffs. If you view this image at full size, you can just make out the widths of the pine sidewalks, five and eight feet.

The block under discussion is #264, directly above the word "Bay

Neither store has been built yet. Nor indeed have many of the houses. Notice the square wooden shed at the corner of Gloucester and Bay — the eventual home of Bayscorner. The numerous, small orange/yellow houses on this plan were also made of wood, while brickwork is shown in red. Notice St. Patrick's Irish Catholic Church (extant, completed 1875), built of stone in block #255 facing onto Kent. The associated orphanage (block #254) was also built by 1878, as was the Catholic school (evidently rebuilt, currently St. Patrick's adult school, ESL and computer). The orphanage grounds are now the site of Centennial Towers at 200 Kent, a 15-storey glass box with a cruciform footprint, built in 1965 — I'm sure it was the cat's meow at the time.

My next set of records date to 1912. Here's Goad again, this time with a closeup of block #264.

Infill is denser and sheds, if anything, more rife. The Bay/Nepean shed has been replaces by a small one, set back from the roads. Houses have been built on Bay, constructed of wood with brick veneer. The present building at the corner of Bay and Nepean shows up here, making it over 100 years old. I have to believe that its twin across the block showed up shortly thereafter. The building at Nepean displays a signature angled doorway, suggesting to me that it was purpose build as a storefront — a drugstore in this case. The street numbering suggests an apartment above the store and a second address (2 storey) in the rear (?), facing on Bay.

The Might Ottawa city directory for the same year lists this strip of Bay Street thus...

So, we know that Clarence H. Lewis was our druggist and that #s 249, 251 and 259 were occupied. Directly across Nepean a Mrs. Rose Ventura sold fruit, while across Gloucester, a nameless Chinese person or persons plied the laundry trade. It's noteworthy that Mrs. Ventura (likely a widow) warranted a listing by name despite her gender and probable Mediterranian heritage while the "Chinese" was reduced to an adjective and a function.

Might 1914 lists druggist Lewis as having moved to 245-'47 Bay so yes, the Bayscorner building was built within two years of its Nepean Street twin. The nameless Chinese were still washing clothes on the north side of Gloucester and Mrs. Ventura still sold fruit south of Nepean. The following year another Chinese laundry had taken over the original drugstore location at 267 Bay — the older laundry at 239 was apparently still in business.

FF to the present, Bayscorner could making a killing on those Bowery residents if they play their cards right. As for Ricardo's pizza, I don't know how long they've been in business, but sitting right next to a new condo tower can't be all bad, can it? And what's not to love about their green pepper, mushroom and onion mascot?

*Almost, yes-ish, and probably.
**Possibly Sarah "Sally" Olmstead, wife of Nicholas Sparks, widow of Philemon Wright Jr.