Town Hall / Community Centre, Old Ottawa East

OOE's "Old" Town Hall was built in 1895 at the NE corner of Main and Hawthorne and currently serves as a community centre. Over the years, it has worn many hats.

"It has been a baby clinic, dance hall, school, kindergarten, Carnegie Library, head office of a water company, Baptist Mission, election headquarters, police commission, recreation department, home of a theatre group and a jail. It has been used by practicing brass bands, local community groups, comedians and politicians; left vacant; caught fire and had its name changed; and above all else, it has endured ...

Whenever anyone speaks of the history of the community, the first thing mentioned is the old town hall at Main and Hawthorne. Notwithstanding the 'Stone Gates' or the Scholasticate, it is this building that, more than anything else, reminds the community of both the past and present. Having stood now in three successive centuries, it is a reminder of what once was, and as such, demands to be preserved."

source — A History of Ottawa East

I urge you to take a look at a remarkable series of "then and now" transition views of the Town Hall hosted by OttawaHH, here, based on photos by James Ballantyne, who lived just across Main from the Hall.

25 Hawthorne, Old Ottawa East

This odd little building at the west end of Ballantyne Park looks to have been purpose built as a garage. Cinder-block construction — Hayley's?

The earliest newspaper mentions date to 1947, one George Griffith offering his auto repair services. By 1949 the business was called Hawthorne Motors, and for as long as I can remember it was Redshaw Auto Care ("Specializing in Imports and Economy Cars.") The building was taken over by Cyco's ("We're Crazy About Sports") in the spring of 2022.

95 Main Street, Old Ottawa East

Les appartements Le Marquis were completed in 1970. A rental agent (female preferred) was advertised for in June and the first rental ads were published in November. Thus this smaller (10-storey) Brutalist block preceded the Elgin Square and Centretown Place apartments (previous post) by a handful of years.

the Ottawa Citizen, 1970-11-06 p44

The Elgin Square Apartments, Golden Triangle, Ottawa

 The Elgin Square Apartments (475 Elgin Street) loom above the berm of the Queensway, bathed in the glow of a pastel sunset.

The first ads for Elgin Square appeared in May 1974. 

The lot was previously a service station — the yellow block on this 1965 aerial photo shows what would become the Elgin Square's footprint. More than half of that area is occupied by the rear parkade, a boxlike structure attached the back of the main building. Note the Queensway bridge being built over the Rideau Canal, and the Tiffany Apartments (1954) backing onto the Elgin Square lot.

We can see how the parkade is configured in this Google image —

Elgin Square's construction style has been described as barely-Brutal or Brutalist-lite. Robert Smythe, the late historian of Ottawa architecture, penned an underwhelming assessment —

Planned or unplanned — like Toronto, which has the second highest number of apartment towers in North America, Ottawa has a great many high-rise apartments in both the inner and outer suburbs. Some were developer-planned mixed use communities. Some just sprouted like giant concrete weeds.

The boom of the early 70s occurred at an unfortunate time in architecture, when the favoured material was raw cement used for poured-in-place solid walls and balcony parapets, at best relieved by some grooves. Where does it come from? It's is not particularly rooted in Brutalism. No bush-hammering, exposed aggregate, gnarly formwork, precast panels or extreme sculptural shapes.

This "poured-in-place" raw cement appears to have contributed to a fatal incident on the Elgin Square job site.

Mr. Freitas, described as being in fair condition in the article, would die from his injuries some three weeks later. For its part, Centretown Developments seemed to have been more concerned as to whether the incident might scare away renters.

 

Centretown Place on Slater Street was completed the following year — a near-identical twin to Elgin Square. Ads began to appear in September 1975.

8 McLeod, Golden Triangle, Ottawa

 Me, out for a walk at 5:00 AM — dark sky, empty streets, no birds yet, just a few tree-crickets chirring in the shrubbery, here and there.

Construction, begun this summer, proceeds apace on a new house at #8. Completed, it'll look like this ...

... see a brief discussion here.

The original 8 McLeod was a charming little box-shaped affair, built in the Prairie style sometime between 1923 and 1928. I'm afraid I have no idea who designed it. The first occupants were most likely Colonel Dougal Carmichael and his wife Bessie, as listed in the 1932 City Directory. 

This Street View shows the house in October of 2020. It was demolished in 2024.

Comparing the Street View with the architect's rendering above, we can see past the house to a small back yard facing onto the Queen Elizabeth Driveway. That space was recently filled in by another new build, now numbered 112 QE Driveway, completed this summer.

St-Joseph d'Orléans, 1879 and 1906

I have lately discovered an online PDF of H. Belden's 1879 Historical Atlas of County Carleton, boasting a scan quality that far exceeds the crapulent version that I (and I think many others) have been relying on for years now — download it for free here! The map of Gloucester Township features several insert plans of settlements and suburbs I've heard of but never actually seen before, including this survey of the Village of St Joseph, Orléans as we call it today. 

The lot numbers across the top of the plan are the original Gloucester Township designations, First Concession, Ottawa River Front. We see St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church sitting near the middle of the plan on the Ottawa/Montreal Road, later the "Old" Montreal Road and now St Joseph Boulevard. Bilberry Creek runs north toward the Ottawa River, passing next to the Church — the open space west of the creek would become the Orléans Cemetery.

The "road allowance between the 1st and 2nd concessions" is now Notre Dame Street, while "Cumberland Street" is now the Tenth Line Road.

Wikipedia has a dandy summary of the area's early European agricultural settlement here.

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While we're wallowing in maps, here's something published 27 years after Belden's — a detail (Orléans again) from the Department of Militia and Defence, 1906.

If you look closely, you'll see St Joseph's Church on the old highway, coloured red, just east of the creek.

An interesting feature here is the Canadian Northern Rail line (CNoR) passing to the north of the village. Those tracks would be acquired by CN, then abandoned at the start of WWII. This right-of-way would eventually become the "new" Montreal Road, now the Queensway/174.

The brown contour lines here reveal two significant limestone outcrops. The larger of these, to the lower left between the railways tracks and the Navan Road, was first quarried after WWII by the Ottawa Valley Crushed Stone company, later by Francon Concrete, and later still by Canada Cement Lafarge. A smaller outcrop, just above the word Orleans on the map, was also quarried in the 20th century. It was later abandoned and the pit now contains a housing development — Quarry Glen by Minto.

Besserer's Wharf on the Ottawa River would be developed as a camping ground, later renamed "Hiawatha Park." And the "L.H." just north of Lower Duck Island (left side of map) was a lighthouse of sorts — a beacon, which may have given the suburb of Beacon Hill its name.

7-9 Hawthorne Avenue, Old Ottawa East

 Directory listings suggest construction some time between 1901 and 1909.

145 McLeod Street, Golden Triangle, Ottawa

 Obscured by trees, overdramatized by clouds, whatever, I couldn't not go for a harshly lit, off-centre composition. The house was built c. 1900 and beyond that fact, the Directories have been of little help.

Goad 1912 shows #145 (red arrows, 2½-storey brick), joined at the buttocks to the smaller, wooden #143. Some time during the latter 20th (no later than 1991), 143 was replaced by the 143s A and B, a cute and snappy pair, modern, but not jarring — nicely integrated with their setting.

Main Street east side, between Harvey and Greenfield/Havelock, Old Ottawa East

 This block is dominated by two addresses, The Emporium furniture store and The Glassworks condominiums. Goad 1912 lays things out thus —

Notice the wooden 2½ on the corner of Harvey, the one set at a jaunty angle (why?) with the word "meat" printed on it. I'll bet you they sold meat there, probably on the ground floor, with dwellings on the second and third. The City Directory for 1912 lists "St Jean, Harry btchr" at 43-45. Btw, the same listings give "Slattery Mrs Bridget" at #31 near the north end of the block next to the grocery store, a widow one assumes, married into the famous meat-farming Slattery family of Old Ottawa East. I wonder if Harry St Jean sold Slattery meat ...

Take a peek behind Harry's butcher shop, at 57 Harvey — it's a "Chin. l'dy." — yes, a Chinese laundry. These establishments were ubiquitous throughout the city by the turn of the century and it's saddening to observe that the City Directories simply listed them as, well, Chinese laundries, not bothering to dignify them with proper names. As if they weren't so much people as some sort of Asian substance that cropped up from time to time, here and there when clothes needed washing.

At some point, I'm not sure when but it was no later that 1958 (and I'm guessing it was before the War) the laundry disappeared, and house on the corner was enveloped, skirted is perhaps the better word, by a peculiar single-storey retail space that ran along the south side of building and right 'round the back. I do find newspaper mentions of butcher equipment for sale at the address in the early 1940s ... hmm. By the 1950s we find ads for a Hardware Store, Farrell by name, second-hand stoves and fridges being a thing. These days, the house and its outskirtings host The Emporium furniture, by appointment.

*        *        *

The northern two thirds of the block saw no dramatic development until the late 1960s. Then this, from 1968.

The Shell station occupied the 0.32 acre lot for the next three decades. Here's how it looked in a 1991 aerial photo — I count three pumps.

The next available aerial dates to 1999 and shows a completely vacant lot. Clearly, something large was afoot.

These images from the Ottawa Citizen's February 3 2001 edition heralded CharlesFort's "The Glassworks" project, anticipated occupancy in December of the same year. We see it looming behind the old butcher shop in my photo, back at the top of the page.

27 Hawthorne Avenue, Old Ottawa East

This little bungalow was built some time between 1933 and 1946, the latter year providing the first documentation I can find.

This announcement appeared in the Ottawa Journal in November of that year. A Dr. W. L. Barnabe heads a list of dentists returning to private practice after having served in the military during WWII.

As featured in the Ottawa Citizen, August 8 1879

171 Daly Avenue, Sandy Hill, Ottawa

The engraving is from the H. Belden Atlas of 1879, the photo is, of course, a Google Maps Street View. The question has to be, did houses get smaller or did we get larger?

Regarding the C. H. Mackintosh referred to in the caption, Wikipedia tells us that ...

The Honourable Charles Herbert Mackintosh (May 13, 1843 – December 22, 1931) was a Canadian journalist and author, newspaper owner and editor, and politician. He served as mayor of Ottawa from 1879 to 1881, represented the City of Ottawa as a Liberal-Conservative Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada from 1882 to 1887, and from 1890 to 1893, and served as Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Territories from 1893 to 1898, as it underwent a major transition toward responsible government."

Do check out the link, Mackintosh seems to have been quite the dashing fellow.

Goad, again from 1879, shows us a house (red arrows) of all-brick construction, facing south onto Daly.

171 Daly sits roughly halfway up the slope of Sandy Hill. Back in the day, the then-spacious back yard would have enjoyed an unimpeded view of Lower Town and the Gatineau Hills beyond. Going by an 1863 Ottawa Directory Map and some early directory mentions, the house seems to have been built after 1863, its likely first occupant being William Fingland, who ran a dry-goods store on Sussex. A renumbering of addresses at the time makes exact dating a bit tricky, but Fingland appears as the resident of #171 in the 1875 City Directory.

The Milo Court Apartments, 145 Echo Drive, Old Ottawa East

I don't have an exact build date for this house-turned-apartment-block, but between the limestone foundation, the brickwork and the squat, solid, bilateral massing, I'm going to say late Victorian to early Edwardian. Goad confirms that it was standing by 1912.

This is his sheet #159 for that year, showing the west end of the Archville sector of Ottawa East.

#145 Echo (green arrows, near the middle of the plan) appears as a 2½-storey all-brick house with a square footprint and a mansard roof. We see an appended wooden summer-kitchen, a small detached shed (for firewood perhaps) and a stable (grey again, the oblong with the X on it.)

Glance over at the upper-right corner and note the ingloriously bisected #97 Echo (blue arrows), a 2½-storey brick-veneer that we'll get back to shortly. Observe the J.&T. Ballantyne coal and lumber sheds flanking the Grand Trunk Railway tracks, again facing onto Echo Drive and finally, look across to the right to see a brick house (yellow arrows) just south of those tracks facing east onto Main Street — that was the home of James Ballantyne, the "J." in J.&T. Ballantyne. It no longer exists.

The "T." in the company name was Thomas, James' brother. He lived on Echo Drive. The question is where exactly. Documentation by Goad and in the City directories is a bit sparse prior to 1907, the year Ottawa East became part of the City proper. However we do find this listing from 1909 —

The preceding year's Directory shows Thomas Ballantyne at 97 Echo (as noted at the upper right corner of the Goad plan) and does not list #145, so it would be a reasonable guess that Ballantyne built latter house and moved in c. 1908-1909. We also see here that the lumber-yard was being called "The Stewarton Lumber Co." Stewarton was the informal name for a long, narrow strip of land owned by the Stewart family, running west to east from Bronson Avenue to Rideau River, of which Archville was part.

Thomas Ballantyne died in the spring of 1923. This Ottawa Citizen obituary from April 10 provides a nice biographical summary —

His son, Dr. Charles T. Ballantyne, moved into #145 with his wife and daughter — sadly, he died a mere two years later, in June of 1925, at the age of 49.

145 Echo saw a succession of occupants over the years. Shortly before WWII it was home to a private school for boys.

The street car mentioned in this 1937 ad was the line that ran down Elgin, crossed the Pretoria Bridge into Old Ottawa East at Hawthorne, then travelled south along Main Street to Clegg (the Children's Park on the SE corner of that intersection was originally the site of the turning loop at the end of the tracks.)

I do not know when #145 was converted to an apartment building, or when it was named the "Milo Court," though I have reason to suspect it occurred in 1947. It was in May of that year that someone ran an ad for a "fire escape in good condition" at the address. We can see in my photo that the conversion entailed the construction of an external stairwell to give private access to the upper floors. What we don't see is that the entire building was extended back into two symmetrical wings, roughly doubling its footprint. This arrangement is clearly visible in aerial photos from 1958. The fire escape in the ad had likely been attached to the rear of the building until the extension was built.

Here is the view from behind today ...

I can find no mentions of a Milo Court in the newspapers of the '40s or early '50s, but then housing was so scarce after the war that builders seldom needed to advertise apartments — hopeful tenants would fairly sniff out construction sites! The stained-glass "Milo Court" transom window disappeared from above the front door some time after 2019. Will we ever know who Milo was?

Fall and Winter Fashions, 1907-1908

Illustration from an ad placed in the Ottawa Citizen, October 12 1907, by the T. Lindsay Ltd. department store. Lindsay's was the first tenant of the "Daly Building" at Rideau and Sussex, from 1905 to 1909.

15-17-19-21 Hawthorne Avenue, Old Ottawa East

Likely built after 1901, the 1908 City Directory shows all four units occupied.

This 1958 aerial shows 15-thru-21 in context, coloured in blue, on the north side of Hawthorne, on what we could call the "Ballantyne block." The J.&T. Ballantyne coal bins (originally coal and lumber) sit to the north of the 4-row on either side of the CN tracks, facing Echo Drive. #3-5 from the previous post pops in green. 

The block is dominated by Ballantyne Park, seen here with a diagonal footpath cutting across it from Hawthorne to Main Street, as such paths inevitably do. This park had previously been the homestead of James Ballantyne, whose not-ostentatious late Victorian 2½-storey house faced onto Main. Less than a decade after his photo was taken, the Queensway would replace the train tracks — the coal bins were removed (heating oil was fast usurping domestic coal by then so hey) and the northern part of the park (red) was sadly buried under Ottawa's very own cross-town freeway.

The yellow building at the NE corner of Hawthorne and Echo (221 of the latter) served as a drugstore for much of the early 20th century. Starting in the '70s it became home to a series of tres hip cafés, most notably Café Pigeon Bleu (Ray Desforges) and The Black Cat (1st incarnation, Max Roux and Richard Urquhart)* — the kinds of place where you could lose a fortune at Backgammon or order a pot brownie with your cappuchino — if you knew (or were) the secret password.

*Richard, I assume, is a vampire.

I only see him at night and he doesn't age.

221 Echo Drive, lately the Gray Jay, now dark 

— at the time of writing the building is still up for rent.

 

3-5 Hawthorne Avenue, Old Ottawa East

This double is described as "new" in a rental ad from 1909. Goad 1912 shows brick veneer on wood.

157-159 Frank Street, Golden Triangle, Ottawa

One of the many homes built in the south end of the Golden Triangle in the 1901-1908 time frame. 

Eliza Thompson was the widow of William, while Ernest Hurdman was likely of "the" Hurdman lumbering family — directory listing from the latter year.

Goad's 1912 depiction bolsters my suspicion that the enclosed sunporch thingy was tacked on at a later date.

163 Frank Street, Golden Triangle, Ottawa

 Built, between 1901 and 1908 per the City Directories — Goad 1912 shows all-brick construction. The 1908 Directory lists Thomas Stewart as the occupant, likely the first. Steward worked as a shop foreman for the C.A.R.

Where once a "Splendid New Structure"

I remember cycling up Dalhousie Street a few years back and thinking "didn't there used be a beer store along here once upon a time?" Apparently there was. The above clipping, which I came across while looking for something completely different (which is how things usually happen) dates to May 7 1980. I do find the silk stockings an odd detail — surely they wore nylons?

Here we see that very Brewers' Retail in an aerial photo from 1991, sited on the SE corner of Dalhousie and Cathcart. An old house hugs the back of the building — I'm guessing that the loading dock was attached to the south end of things. The store was replaced by two strings of row-houses some time between '91 and '99. 

I wondered if a newspaper search would help me figure out an opening date and I was not disappointed. Both Ottawa dailies afforded the January 1955 event a lavish (identical) full-page spread, complete with a map. Below are two details from that page, as published on January 13, referring to an opening on Monday the 10th (note the date on the calendar on the "self write-up counter."

The feature's 4½ columns of effusive copy  included a loving description of the building's design — I try not to giggle as I read it.

The new Brewers' Retail is of pleasing one-storey design. Exterior brick-work, light grey in color, forms an effective architectural contrast with the canopy, finished in apple-green trim, and the sign [is] carried out in bright red script letters.

Store windows are aluminum and plate-glass sections, supported by a black granite base, while Indiana limestone has been used as building trim. The centrally located entrance and exit doors of the new Brewers Retail are automatically operated on the new "Magic Carpet" principle.

In the store interior, the use of modern construction materials has resulted in extremely effective eye-appeal. Upper walls are done in a striking biscuit shade at either end, with the central wall in dark green. Woodwork is white Virginia oak in a natural finish. The contrasting, terrazzo floor, rectangular in design, has been worked out in two shades of green while the pipe columns have been done in warm tones of gray with window drapes in the new biscuit color. Adding a unique touch to the attractive store interior are two recessed, indirect lighted wall murals, depicting typical Canadian outdoor scenes.

Green terrazzo, check. Recessed illumination landscape mural, check. "Magic Carpet" pressure pad automatic doors, check. Those were the mid-50s I love and remember.

"A striking biscuit shade" — God help us all.