A few years ago, I wrote a short piece about The Park Square Apartments at 425 Elgin Street in Centretown for OttawaStart. As with pretty well anything written, there are a number of things that I would do differently now, but it still gets some of the basic idea out.
Continue reading Update: Shenkman’s Park Square Apartments (1936)
I’ve always appreciated the Edgewater Apartments in New Edinburgh. In most other settings, it would be a tidy (if unremarkable) mid-century apartment block, but set in New Edinburgh – the northern portion of New Edinburgh – it takes on a whole different meaning.
Continue reading The Edgewater Apartments: Ken Greene Ruffles a few Feathers Along the ‘Royal Route’ (1951)
Given the combination of her knowledge and personality, it perhaps should not come as a surprise that former Mayor Charlotte Whitton had a whole lot to say on the topic of regional governance. Perhaps more so than any other participant in the process, Whitton considered the issue more fully and on a systemic basis.
Continue reading Second City, Second Metro: Charlotte Whitton Takes the Stage. Twice.
One of the more important sources I have relied on to gain some type of impression of the state of housing in the Ottawa area is, unsurprisingly, the Census. Although not immune to critique, Census data, even at the worst of times, has been a useful source to raise further questions, develop leads, and find new and interesting ways to reframe our understanding of just what it meant at various times to take, produce, regulate, manage, maintain, improve, demolish, and – darn it – actually enjoy shelter.
One of the more interesting tools that I have used for understanding the ethnic and racial composition of Canadian cities in the postwar era is called City Stats. Billed as a tool “designed to encourage the use of measures of residential segregation in Canadian urban history,” it allows the user to run calculations, from the basic to the complex, to understand segregation better in one, several, or all urban areas in Canada.
Continue reading Ethnicity and Segregation in Ottawa-Hull, 1961
When Ottawa Transportation Commission (OTC) Chairman David McMillan and its General Manager George Brady appeared in front of Murray Jones with their submission, it was clear that there was one thing on their minds: financial sustainability.
The University Women’s Club of Ottawa (UWCO) was founded in 1910 by a group of fifty-four women with degrees who came together with the intention of forming a similar club for university-educated women to those in Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver. As was the case with many of these voluntary societies, UWCO mission was a blend of social, educational, and charitable ends. In addition to public lectures, to achieve their educational purpose, the UWCO also regularly held study groups on a wide variety of topics. Although they were hardly limited to it, some of the groups represented an opportunity for the members to use their skills and weigh in on the issues of the day.1This is a fairly simplistic boiling down of the UWCO. For an extended look at the history of the first 50 years of the UWCO, see Laurie J. Smith. ‘A Feeling of the Responsibility of Women for Women’: The University Women’s Club of Ottawa, 1910-60. Thesis. Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2002.
Notes
| ↥1 | This is a fairly simplistic boiling down of the UWCO. For an extended look at the history of the first 50 years of the UWCO, see Laurie J. Smith. ‘A Feeling of the Responsibility of Women for Women’: The University Women’s Club of Ottawa, 1910-60. Thesis. Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2002. |
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Though an award-winning project, the Highlands condominium on St. Laurent seems unremarkable – at least in style – to most. Indeed, in spite my own enthusiasm for this brown brick beauty, I’ve more often than not found that most seats on the bandwagon go unfilled. The same cannot be said for the people who have lived in the Highlands, however. Be it the case that they are current residents or past residents, all of those I have spoken to have shared fond memories related to it. To be certain, while tastes change, Irving Grossman’s early 1970s design has stood on its own.
Continue reading The View From Up Here (The Highlands on St. Laurent, 1970-73)
With all of the beautiful and interesting heritage properties that stand in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill neighbourhood, it’s somewhat interesting that the apartments above are (a) the first buildings that I really remember loving in the neighbourhood, and (b) still among my favourite. In a setting filled with delightful institutional architecture and numerous Victwardian houses, for some, it would be a wonder that a small handful of 1930s apartments are what have stuck in my mind.
Continue reading A Major Development in Sandy Hill (The Major Apartments, Besserer Street, 1937)
If you’ve ever looked into the construction of apartments, small commercial buildings, and industrial buildings in Ottawa during the mid-century period, there is a nearly 100% chance that you’ve come across a building that was either designed by or altered by J. Morris Woolfson.
Continuing with my use of Might’s Directories to collect data on apartment buildings, above is a map with all of the apartment buildings listed in the 1950 edition. For each of the points on the map, I have given the apartment building’s name (if it has one), its address, and if it has been demolished or replaced, date or date range for when that happened.
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.