November 2016 – historynerd.ca

Ottawa’s Building Permits, 1950

At a combined cost of $1,722,000, Alvin Enterprises’ Manor Park Extension was the largest private sector construction project permitted in 1950.

Earlier this year in a pique of what I can only describe as a mixture of frustration about a lack of data and nostalgia for some of my field’s roots, I began to harvest more data about Ottawa’s development. It may have been a matter of being dissatisfied with the broad, sweeping motions and proclamations we make about the nature of midcentury development or maybe I just wanted to play with spreadsheets and pie charts like previous generations of urban historians did. Whatever the motivation, I got my wish and wrote stories like Ottawa’s Apartments, 1945, Ottawa’s Apartment’s, 1955, Laurentian View’s Apartments, 1955, From East(wood) Park to West(wood) Park, and The Alta-Vista Drive Apartments and the Alta-Vista Shopping Centre (1956).

Continue reading Ottawa’s Building Permits, 1950

Views: Bell’s Corners (1980)

Robertson Road in 1980. Image: City of Ottawa Archives, CA025336.

I first encountered the above image of Bell’s Corners¹I categorically refuse to leave the apostrophe out. in Bruce Elliott’s The City Beyond (1991). Although I don’t count many on my team of consummate fans of crass commercialism in the public realm, I’m willing to stand out and say that I’ve always been a fan of this sort of suburban view. In my mind’s eye, this sort of “messy” collection of signage is the suburban visual-equivalent of the ideal dense and walkable neighbourhoods that I cherish most deeply.

Continue reading Views: Bell’s Corners (1980)

Notes[+]

Notes
↥1	I categorically refuse to leave the apostrophe out.

Views: Carleton’s University Centre From Above (1963-2015)

Carleton's campus as it appeared in 2015. Image: Google Maps. — Carleton’s campus as it appeared in 2015. Image: Google Maps.

I’ve never hidden my love for the modernist campus of Carleton University. That its Rideau Campus was designed from the get-go as a modern departure from the Oxford-Lite or Harvard-Lite approach that most Canadian universities up to that point had taken was not only a breath of fresh air, but a bold and confident step in an Ottawa that was not always known for such things.¹For an interesting history of Carleton, see H. Blair Neatby and Don McKeown. Creating Carleton: The Shaping of a University. Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.

Continue reading Views: Carleton’s University Centre From Above (1963-2015)

Notes[+]

Notes
↥1	For an interesting history of Carleton, see H. Blair Neatby and Don McKeown. Creating Carleton: The Shaping of a University. Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.

Views: Ottawa’s Leslie Park (1969)

Leslie Park garden homes at Redwood Court. Image: CMHC 1969-289 Image 2. Taken May 9, 1969.

Leslie Park garden homes at Redwood Court. Image: CMHC 1969-289 Image 3. Taken May 9, 1969.

Shots taken by the CMHC on May 9, 1969 of the Redwood Court row housing development in Ottawa’s (then Nepean’s) Leslie Court. This was one of the Campeau Corporation’s many (many) developments in the national capital.

Update: Porcupine General Hospital (1938) and the Tisdale Municipal Building (1940)

The Tisdale Municipal Building as it appeared in the local papers. Source: Porcupine Advance, September 26, 1940, p. 5.

Almost two weeks ago, I wrote a short story about the Tisdale Municipal Building in South Porcupine. While I was able to get an architect and speak a little about the context, that was about as far as it went. If you’ve followed along on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, you’ll see that I’ve just returned from a trip to Toronto, where I spent time at the Archives of Ontario. While I was there to do some research for my thesis, I took the opportunity to peruse some of the pages of the Porcupine Advance.

Continue reading Update: Porcupine General Hospital (1938) and the Tisdale Municipal Building (1940)