344 Frank St., Centretown, Ottawa

 One of the earliest houses on Frank, #344 (originally #116), a 2½-storey BV, was built c. 1887 and first occupied by Alfred Burnell, a civil engineer.

The left third of our photo is taken up by the Lancaster Apartments (c. 1913.) The Lancaster sits directly west of O'Connor St., which points to a curious fact about the development of this part of Centretown. Take a look at this detail of Goad's key plan from 1901 —

For reasons that probably had to do with properties already developed, when O'Connor was extended south toward the C.A.R. tracks, it skipped three blocks between Lewis and Gladstone. I've boxed the affected (or more properly "unaffected") area in red. This section of O'Connor would be opened up some time in the 1900s, so that by the time the Lancaster was built, it did indeed flank the new section of roadway,

If we go back to Goad's sheet 66 (again from 1901), we see this —

The house at 344 Frank (here still (#116) is shown with a red arrow. The property that will host the Lancaster is the courtyard and stables of a double facing south onto Gladstone. Beyond that, Frank continues east uninterrupted to Metcalfe. Notice that block 387, from Frank to Gladstone is of less than the standard depth for a city block in this area. I don't know why this should be so, but it happens that Gladstone marked the southern city limits of Ottawa when this part of now-Centretown was being developed. The land from Gladstone to the C.A.R. tracks was "Stewarton," owned by the family of William Steward. Stewarton was surveyed for development in 1871, then annexed by Ottawa in 1889.