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
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
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
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.
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. |
|---|
One of the frustrations that I had writing about the south-west corner of Bank and Sparks last year is that great visuals were surprisingly difficult to come by. Earlier this week, Trevor Button shared with Lost Ottawa a much better one taken by his grandfather in 1974 as the block was being prepped for construction of the C.D. Howe Building.
Although I don’t have anything in particular against the C.D. Howe Building, I do prefer a finer-grained urban fabric myself.
(7)-9-11 Putman, 2009 and 2017.
This weekend Kathleen and I went out to take in the sights and the deals at the New Edinburgh Garage sale. It was an interesting walk for my own part. About four years ago, I moved back to Centretown from Vanier North and have not spent so much time wandering around the area, so this was a bit like visiting an old friend.
A whole lot of things have changed in my life in the last little while that have resulted in me spending time rearranging things. In the middle of all of that, I have also tried to not let this whole blogging enterprise fall by the wayside. It’s one of the more enjoyable things that I have going. In between all of the other things, I’ve been continuing to pick at the long story I have going about the Canada Square project in Toronto at Yonge and Eglinton. That should come soon enough.
It’s sometimes a happy story, and sometimes a sad one, but buildings always have stories to tell. In the case of 82 Sherbrooke in Ottawa’s Hintonburg, it’s the latter.
In 1993, after 78 years in business, the Woolworth’s on Rideau Street announced its closure. The ailing chain of discount stores, then in throes of death, undertook to reorganize and closed 150 stores across the country. In Ottawa, aside from the Rideau Woolworth, the Woolco in the Merivale Mall was slated to close.1Kelly Egan, “Cashing out after 78 years; Customers, staff lament downtown Woolworth closure,” Ottawa Citizen, October 23, 1993, C1. According to Woolworth officials, it was tentatively scheduled to close its doors for the last time on December 24, leaving the 50-odd employees with something of a bittersweet Christmas.2”Woolworth to close Byward landmark,” Ottawa Citizen, October 16, 1993, 6.
Last year, when I wrote a brief piece about the Kenniston, I neglected to include a photograph of the dining hall that was a feature.