Almost nothing displayed was much of a surprise, really. The city’s 1932 atlas was published in colour and identifies numerous landmarks, buildings, and points of interest across the city at the time. Civic, federal, and ecclesiastical infrastructure are all about what would be expected.
A Modern Elf (A Brief Update to a Brief History of the Elphin), 1966
Around four years ago, I wrote a short piece for Ottawa Start about the Elphin Apartments, at the corner of Gladstone and Metcalfe in Ottawa’s Centretown. Given the parameters, I was generally pleased with the results but one thing really bothered me: just who was behind the apartment?
Continue reading A Modern Elf (A Brief Update to a Brief History of the Elphin), 1966
Ottawa’s MacLaren House Gets all the Wrong Attention, 1967-93
It has now been a few years since I first wrote about the Gilbert Apartments, formerly located at 293 Lisgar and soon to be the site of a new 108-unit Claridge apartment. The Werner Noffke-designed walkup was neat as a pin, but had not really received the care it might otherwise have in the intervening decades and had reached its end of life.
Just a heads-up: this one does talk about the death of senior citizens in a relatively recent period.
Continue reading Ottawa’s MacLaren House Gets all the Wrong Attention, 1967-93
Apartments, the Depression, and Research Never Completed
Interest-based research is a wonderful thing. Something catches your interest, you ride it out, put it aside. It’s that last part that really gets you. All that effort should, really, result in something. At least a poorly-written blog post, if not something more substantial. This has been one of my peskier issues. Continue reading Apartments, the Depression, and Research Never Completed
The Heritage: Seniors Housing for Regina, 1971
As I explore a bit in an upcoming piece about the MacLaren House nursing home (1967-1993) in Ottawa, shelter for seniors came to be a major concern in housing policy during the 1960s.1To be certain, it was a known issue long before that, but it was not until the 1960s in Canada that it received a dedicated policy response.
Continue reading The Heritage: Seniors Housing for Regina, 1971
Notes
| ↥1 | To be certain, it was a known issue long before that, but it was not until the 1960s in Canada that it received a dedicated policy response. |
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Skyline Hotel, Etobicoke, c. 1962
Midcentury hotels are one of the first things that got me into urban history. There is just something about their design and the role that they tended to play that proves endlessly interesting. Although hardly competition for the Constellation Hotel down the road (now demolished), the Skyline recently caught my eye.
An Eastward View of the Wood-Wellesley Improvement Area, 1969
Of the things I’ve hoped to see more often appear on the CMHC’s FTP site since it began being indexed by Google a few years back, I must say that it is photographs that I’ve wanted to see more of. Although I love the slow (but consistent) digitization of print materials, there is something to be said for high-quality scans of colour slides from the Corporation’s archives that really make so much come alive. A small handful of images from Toronto taken in 1969 and 1971 has always been interesting to me.
Continue reading An Eastward View of the Wood-Wellesley Improvement Area, 1969
Trillium Terrace, Etobicoke, c. 1956 & 2015
Image: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 213, Series 1464, File 29, Item 20.
Image: Google Maps, October 2015.
In 1955/56 the Etobicoke Council documented the location for the then-controversial sewage treatment plant along the Humber River. When looking through issues of the Etobicoke Guardian from the era, it was clear that, as a political topic, the plant soaked up much of the local government’s time.
317 Murray, Ottawa, 1968 & 2015
317 Murray in 1968. Image: CMHC 1968-242.
317 Murray in September 2015. Image: Google Maps.
317 Murray in Ottawa’s Lowertown was an apartment for much of its life, but for a while in the 1970s, it also served as St. Anne’s medical clinic and a Legal Aid office.
The Mann Avenue Project (Strathcona Heights), 1947
One of the most interesting affordable housing developments in Ottawa’s history has been, at least to me, the so-called Mann Avenue Project, later renamed to Strathcona Heights. I have written about it briefly before on this site (and it has figured into other writing). The CMHC recently put a scanned copy of this small development bulletin on its FTP site and I figured that it would be nice to share.
Though undated, the bulletin appears to have been published some time around late 1949 or early 1950, just before its residents voted to have it officially renamed to “Strathcona Heights”.1It was renamed at the request of the Mann Avenue Community Council, a group of residents formed the previous fall. See “Community Council Being Formed at Mann Avenue,” Ottawa Journal, September 26, 1949, p. 21; “Mann Avenue Project Now Becomes Strathcona Heights,” Ottawa Journal, November 8, 1950, p. 1.
I am not certain about where being locally referred to as “Ottawa’s New Town” came from, as it does not appear to have been printed in the local papers or anywhere else but this bulletin.
Notes
| ↥1 | It was renamed at the request of the Mann Avenue Community Council, a group of residents formed the previous fall. See “Community Council Being Formed at Mann Avenue,” Ottawa Journal, September 26, 1949, p. 21; “Mann Avenue Project Now Becomes Strathcona Heights,” Ottawa Journal, November 8, 1950, p. 1. |
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Spremo does Casa Loma, 1970
I don’t have anything much to say about it other than I’ve been reminiscing lately about my visit to Casa Loma in the early 1990s. This is one of my favourite Boris Spremo shots (amazing how they tend to involve St. Clair in some way) and one that I would take myself today, given half the chance.
CMHC Presentation Drawings, 1970 (Part 3: Campbellton, NB)
The third instalment of this series brings us to Campbellton, New Brunswick, to the Dover-Tingley neighbourhood.
Continue reading CMHC Presentation Drawings, 1970 (Part 3: Campbellton, NB)