389 Cooper, the Tetbury

389 Cooper was first built some time between 1875 and 1884, per the Woodburn City Directories. Goad (1888) depicts it as a typical two-and-a-half-storey, brick-on-wood single-family house. It would have likely been front-gabled, like the all-brick #379 at the right-hand edge of the picture.

from Goad 1888, sheet 53 — note Cooper Street's original 60' width

#389 was converted to the four-unit Tetbury Apartments circa 1915 (per the Might Directories) using the original's low, somewhat rubbly limestone foundation.  I'm not sure if the front sun-rooms were added at that time or whether the Tetbury originally featured the stacked wooden balconies usual for the period.

In addition to four domestic units, Might (1916) lists a 389½, occupied by "Harrison Ladies Tailor" — commas and apostrophes being deemed a waste of both time and lead.

The Tetbury name harkens to a small town in the Cotswolds of Gloucestershire, England. Until recently, the building sported awnings at the doorway and front window, which lent a shabby dignity now lacking.

Cardinal and Rothwell

Here's a fun old foto for anyone who lives or has lived in either Cardinal or Rothwell Heights. Embiggen as much as your browser permits to admire the crispness of this 1933 aerial image.

I've marked the points at which Mowat and Seguin now join Blair Road (then "Skead") and where Elwood runs south into Cardinal Heights, Beckenham Lane into Rothwell. Notice how Beckenham drops sharply into a pit in the limestone bedrock — Karst or quarry, I wonder.

The yellow "S" shows the present position of the silver ball sculpture, visible from Montreal Road just West of Blair, while the red circle encloses an old stone farmhouse, still standing on the NRC property, on the north side of Montreal Road.

The orange circle marks the quarry just off Davidson Drive, now a park. The quarry seems to be only slightly excavated in this photo. In a 1928 photo, it appears as a simple outcrop. At 113 metres above sea level, Quarry Park is one of the highest elevations for several kilometres in any direction.

I take the feature boxed in green to be a stable of some sort. It would have stood on Seguin, at the top of Elvina, just uphill from from a fairly steep hill.

My favourite find on this map is the little house in the blue box. Its' a small, two-storey thing with three rear-facing dormers. It's still there, numbered #13 Seguin, set well-back from the road. Given the date of the photo, it has to pre-date the development of Cardinal Heights (early 1950s) by at least twenty years. Indeed, it may be the oldest house in the neighbourhood.

The purple line divides the historic Skead (on the left) and Rothwell properties. The Belden Atlas (1879) indicates them as Lot 20, 300 acres, Robert Skead, and Lot 19, 300 (?, ink is smudgy) acres, B.&S. "Rathwell". I haven't sort that family out yet, but "B." would be one one the Bens, and the Rathwell spelling occurs often enough in older records that it was likely valid at the time Belden's maps were prepared.

The Old Girl

The Ottawa Citizen September 23 1939. I'm starting to see the appeal of double columns.

A friend's recent mention of suspicious goings on at the Queen Elizabeth Apartments on Metcalfe prompted an afternoon stroll in that direction, confirming her report. The half-basement windows have been boarded up, and barricade fencing (Bassi Construction) surrounds the building.

The QE's deco/moderne entrance with porthole styled doorway, somewhat visible behind Bassi's signage

My source contacted the building owner, Silver Group, and also spoke to some of the Bassi boys directly. Both confirmed that the building has not been sold and is not being demolished to make way for a high-rise. Rather a renovation has begun that could take one or even two years to complete. No word as to whether this upgrade presages future rental units or condominiums.

Of course, "our" Queen, Elizabeth (II) was barely into her teens when this three-storey apartment block was built. "The Queen Elizabeth" was named for Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the late "Queen Mother" (1900-2002). She was, you will remember, delightfully portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter in the 2010 movie The King's Speech.

She also found her way into the (very) early Pink Floyd song Corporal Clegg...

...Corporal Clegg, umbrella in the rain,
he’s never been the same,
no one is to blame.
Corporal Clegg received his medal in a dream
from Her Majesty the Queen —
His boots were very clean!
(chorus)
Mrs. Clegg, you must be proud of him
Mrs. Clegg, another drop of gin?

In the summer of 1939, Elizabeth accompanied her husband, King George VI, on a cross-Canada royal visit. On May 21, while in Ottawa, the King officiated at the dedication of the recently completed National War Memorial at Wellington and Elgin Streets. Consider the looming irony— that a memorial was built to honor Canadian soldiers who had died in "the war to end all wars", even as Hitler was planning the Polish invasion that would trigger WWII.

Lyricist Roger Waters freely admits that his shell-shocked "Corporal Clegg" character grew out of the loss of his father in 1944, killed in action when Waters was only five months old. His song cynically reveals that Clegg's "medal" was probably a vending-machine trinket he'd picked out of the mud at the zoo. He could only fantasize that Elizabeth, the "nanny and mother of the nation"* would bestow the real thing upon him, in person, graciously sharing gin-and-sympathy with his wife. As a boy and as a young man, Rogers likely saw his share of "Cleggs" wandering the streets of Cambridge and then London. At some point he must have wondered — better a dead war hero for a father,  or a living, shambling half-man with PSTD?

The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday, May 20 1939

Impending hell-on-earth notwithstanding, the Royal Couple put on their best faces and criss-crossed Canada in a twelve-car, royal-blue and silver train jointly provided by Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways. They were cheered enthusiastically when and wherever they stopped. Here's a lovely painting for those of you who like trains...

smashing great train art by David A. Oram, check the link

The tour included a short but important side-trip to the United States, ostensibly to chum with FDR and scope out the New York World's Fair, but calculated to generate American sympathy for Britain.

Of the visit, themetrains.com writes (click the link for more train stuff)...

   War was looming. Few in Britain doubted it would come. It was a good time to make clear who your friends were... What was to be known as the Royal Tour of Canada was, in actuality, a thinly veiled dispatch of King George VI and his bride Queen Elizabeth to bolster support for Britain in the New World...

...In the spring of 1939, a tour of The Dominion was planned that would take a reigning British monarch to North America for the first time ever. To the public, it was an official state visit the likes of which Canada had never seen. For an entire month the King and Queen traveled virtually nonstop, visiting dozens of communities and giving dozens of speeches on a whirlwind coast-to-coast whistle-stop tour of Canada and the US. Their message of goodwill and solidarity was repeated in towns large and small. And the public loved it, turning out in droves to catch even a glimpse of the immensely popular royal couple.

   Behind the scenes, the tour was a chance for the British government to make it clear just how important Canada and the US were to them. The message was clear: You are our friends. And we may soon need your strength... [emphasis mine]

Indeed, Canada would follow Britain into WWII on September 10, a mere four months later** and less than two weeks before the Queen Elizabeth Apartments opened for rent — the name would have taken on a sombre resonance.

The Queen mother, her gin habit notwithstanding, lived to the age of 101 and was fondly remembered by her subjects, many of whom are still alive and who, for a time, would have included us. We even named a three-storey apartment building after her. Whatever the Silver Group has planned for her, let's show the old girl the respect that is her due.



*Cecil Beaton, I think. Short 'e' in Cecil, please and thanks.
**The Royals' brief stateside charm offensive notwithstanding, the US did not commit to the war until the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, more than two years later. Such was American sentiment against joining a "foreign" conflict.

Filth

Top Map detail, Dept. of Militia and Defense, 1906

Okay here's a puzzle — and me without a solution. Our last post mentioned two things about Pointe-Gatineau's parc de la Baie — flooding, and contamination.

Funny how that 1904-'06 time-frame keeps cropping up. It just so happens that my earliest Ottawa-Hull topographical map is dated 1906. The detail above shows Pointe-Gatineau relative to "Old Hull" and Ottawa. I count three hotels (H), a post office (P), and a cemetery (C next to a square). The sans-serif T indicates a "telephone office". You can see the Lady Aberdeen Bridge crossing the Gatineau River near its mouth, and two of local ferries that operated at the time. They're indicated by the finely dotted lines, each with a little circle near their middles.

You can also see that the parc de la Baie section is shown as marshland, as if a flooded state was more the rule than the exception. Of course, things are at their worst in spring...

Ottawa Journal, May 4 1897

Questions come to mind. How much time did/does the "park" spend underwater each year? What, if any, efforts have been made to levee and/or drain it over the past century? And how in hell did it get contaminated?

I would have assumed that a regular spring flushing might wash away any contamination. Not that I can find any evidence here for any heavy industry to begin with — nothing of the sort  that laid environmental ruin upon LeBreton Flats or the Chaudière archipelago (for example). Early aerial photos seem to show nothing but farmland and charming wee houses.

Or was it a smaller scale insult, like the McClymont potash field in New Edinburgh? Or, was the field repeatedly inundated with pulp-and-paper waste from upstream? I'll let you know if I find out.

In the meantime, check out these very dirty pictures.

Chaudière Island, Victoria Island, Richmond Landing and the northern part of LeBreton Flats, 1965

Victoria Island (VI, above) was recent closed to the public pending a massive decontamination project. After which...?

W. McClymont potash field yard, New Edinburgh — Goad map detail circa 1895

Parkland in New Edinburgh was the subject of soil remediation a few years back, thanks to industrial contamination dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Tut tut, such smut.

Filthy Plume

Ottawa Citizen, March 18 1949

Call me Miniver Cheevy, just don't call me late for dinner. God, I slay myself sometimes.

Srsly thought, I'm one of those guys (there's a whole bunch of us apparently) who miss having big fat hooting stinking trains slime-trailing their way through the city at all hours of the day and night. Give us a time machine and you'll find us visiting any and all local train yards, any time before, say, 1949 (per above), rolling around with the rolling stock on the dirty ground like dogs on a dead deer.

Well of course, "smokeless" locomotives were a step in the right direction — all progressive and vegan and so forth. But they weren't enough to stop Jacques Greber, the French urban planner, from banishing them from downtown Ottawa like a latter-day Saint Patrick going all auto da fé on the serpents of iron. What he couldn't banish, he hid behind screens of Lombardy Poplar.

As always, I over-simplify. Check out Alain Miguelez's Transforming Ottawa for the lowdown on Monsieur G, French gun-for-hire, with his French snake-gun thingy and what-all.

480 Marlborough Avenue

Ottawa Citizen, April 9 1910

480 Marlborough wasn't exactly "next to" Strathcona Park, it was a block away. But that block, between Marlborough Avenue and Range Road, was sparsely built upon and one could have manged a lovely view of the then recently-built park from the second or third storey balcony. It was likely still close enough to suffer the summer onslaught of mosquitoes that bred in the ornamental ponds — those water-features were replaced with a more useful wading pool in the 1940s.

The house still stands, easy to spot with it's gambrel roof, though partly hidden behind a tree. The porch uprights and balconies have been replaced with metal. The intricate finish on the gables remains, but don't go looking for this house at #148 — it's since been renumbered 88 Marlborough, and divided into three apartments. I'm sure it rents out to students.

Consulting the Might Directories, the 1912 volume suggests that the house's first occupant was Mr. Arthur Dechene, a clerk with the Department of Railways and Canals. He served as Commodore of the Ottawa Power Boat Association. Mr. Dechene was the brother of Mr. Aime M. Dechene, MP for Montmagny, Québec. Mrs. Dechene was active in the I.O.D.E., God bless her.

A Tavern in the Town

Ceci nest plus une taverne.

If you grew up in Ottawa during the 1950s and '60s, you'll remember that restaurants came in three flavours — Canadian, Chinese, and Italian*. In the 1970s, the "spaghetti house" took Italian to the level of larger and busier** (people said "emporium" a lot back then). It also meant non-Italian college kids waiting on tables, and it warned you to expect departures from whatever idea of Italian food you'd grown accustomed to.

By "departures" I mean "winging it" as in "no-one ever died from eating canned bambinos" and "I know we're out of tomato paste — use ketchup". I do not mean forays into Tuscan, Neapolitan, Calabrian or Nouvelle cuisines. Ottawa hadn't quite gotten there yet. We drank our Ruffino Chianti, threw up, and saved the bottles for candle holders.

That said, I did eat at the Saucy Noodle, twice, ordered spaghetti and enjoyed it both times. But what did I know? — I was just a kid. We all were. Barfing all the while.

Oh I'm sorry, that's what the photo is all about. It's the ParkSafe sign overlooking the vacant lot at 409 Somerset West. It's where the Saucy Noodle spaghetti house used to be — in a big old house on this very spot. That's why the frame of the sign says "TAVERN", i.e. a licensed restaurant. Apparently we're far enough into the 21st century to have ghost signs from the latter half of the 20th.

Chris Ryan has written the definitive article about the Noodle, its sign and their historical context. Read it here. Mr. Ryan's piece includes an Ottawa Journal review from August of 1974, penned by Carroll Holland. I take the liberty of reproducing the illustration by Dow, whose work for many years channeled Ottawa's spirit of place. Dow's drawing perfectly captures the atmosphere of the Saucy Noodle, or certainly the atmosphere the ownership was trying to cultivate.

If you'll stop staring at the waiter's butt for half a sec (the gent with the ascot has that base covered), I'd like to point out some novel features of this scene that we would now take for granted. Looking past the 70s hair and the moustaches, the waiter is serving wine in what seems to be a carafe rather than a bottle. That's right, someone opened the bottle behind the bar. So yes, Spanish fly. There is wine on the the tables (Spanish fly). People are drinking the wine (Spanish fly) and sitting in those captain's chairs which were suddenly the rage at hip eateries. Most striking perhaps, a woman seated at one table is leaning over and having a pleasant and animated conversation with a man at another table. Through the fifties and well into the sixties, a scene like this would have been deemed bacchanalian. The manager would have rushed over with a seltzer bottle and a fire blanket. The couple entering from the upper left wouldn't be smiling — they'd be wondering what the hell kind of place they'd walked into. Was this a Fellini movie? Would there be dwarves?

I exaggerate, but less than you might think.

Ms. Holland's review wasn't stellar. "A 75-cent bowl of aged, brown-tipped bowl of lettuce and celery is nothing to boast about." Subsequent dishes were somewhat more kindly received. Of course, those 1974 prices are hard to wrap one's head around — snails in tomato and garlic sauce, $1.95 (!!!). The reviewer manages to complain about the price of coffee — 25 cents with a meal?

Some two weeks after posting his OttawaStart article, Mr. Ryan composed a followup, tracking the latter days of the Saucy Noodle. Read it here. In it, he quotes Citizen reviewer Elizabeth Elmsley, who wasn't afraid to speak ill of the dead, citing the Noodle's "rather tacky ambience." Describing the new Osteria Luigi,  she assured us that "this is not a red-checked tablecloth, Chianti bottle candle holder [!], strolling violinist type of place." In fairness, I'm pretty sure the Noodle didn't have strolling violinists. I would have walked out.

The old house that had harboured the Noodle succumbed to fire in the fall of 1992, which means the lot has been vacant for some twenty-six years. In summer it makes a great shortcut on my way to Massine's. The smell coming from Ceylonta's kitchen side-door is always awesome. Just keep an eye out for rats under the parkade ramp, especially at night.

*      *      *

 I'm having a bit of trouble dating the old house, but this photo that accompanied Ms. Elmsley's 1988 Osteria Luigi review might be of some help.

Notice the signpost and frame, as they still stand today. If the word "TAVERN" graces the outer edge, it's almost impossible to see. Perhaps it's lost in the reflection of the late morning sun on frame's glossy paint.

A double house of this configuration appears on Goad's 1912 sheet #55 — a brick-on-wood two-storey structure with a mansard roof, numbered 409-411. #411, furthest from us in this picture, was the wider half of a not-quite-symmetrical building. Aerial photos from the early and mid- 20th century show two paths leading from the sidewalk to the separate front steps.

The stone foundation was still visible behind the heavy wooden cladding that skirted the porch and the building's corners.  The glazing was clearly modern, and I'm pretty sure that the ostentatiously embossed double doors were a post-Noodle add-on.

The Woodburn Directories are tricky to interpret regarding this address, but a likely scenario emerges whereby the house was built by one Abraham Sparks, a carpenter, circa 1890. This is in line with Chris Ryan's circumspect suggestion that it "...began its civic life as the site of a home at some point during the 1890s."

Well it ain't no Spanish flea.

* A sign advertising "Italian and Canadian dishes" meant you could reasonably expect the menu to include French onion soup, vegetable and/or chicken noodle soup, chef's salad, grilled cheese, hot chicken and club sandwiches, spaghetti, lasagna, hamburgers with fries, and apple pie with cheddar cheese or vanilla ice cream ("a la mode").

**This model would evolve into the likes of East Side Mario's and anything with Guy Fieri's name on it — more Jersey Shore, Via Veneto less so.

Misteaks were made...

Might Directory, Ottawa, 1913

I do hope Pritchard-Andrews got a proper refund. The name on the right margin of the page will ring a loud bell for fans of local architecture.

Mid-Century DIY

Mighty headboards from slender saplings grow, according to this 1955 cartoon. It'll be a few years before these well-chosen (if closely spaced) hardwoods put our tree-planter's hammer-and-saw skills to the test.

Below, DIYism in the news, 1954...

Ottawa Citizen, April 17 1954

Do-it-yourself-ism was a meme, in the strict and original sense of the word. It was octothorpe-worthy. It was, beyond any dispute, a "thing".

According to Newspapers.com, instances of the phrase "Do it yourself" in Ottawa papers started to climb in 1954, peaked in 1959, then re-peaked around 1977-78 and have since trailed off to early '50s levels. The late-'70s peak reflected a flood of ads for "Do It Yourself Centres". The B-under-a-roof logo looks oddly familiar and warrants further poking at...

Ottawa Journal, May 18 1978

The above ad reminds me of That '70s Trend, the basement rec-room*. The wood-grain printed panelling that became a fixture of so many (often DIY) "semi-finished" basements would come back to haunt us in 1995, as the literal backdrop to a series of controversial Calvin Klein ads — what are those kids getting up to down there? They're being too quiet!

 Of course, that which had grown tacky... is chic once more.

*Which is me trying to say something catchy and failing splendidly. The rec-room, sometimes called the playroom or the kids-room (in our east-end Ottawa nabe, at least) was a commonly understood concept by the 1950s. And the Forman's basement walls, those parts we could see on That '70s Show, were exposed cinder-block. So much the funkier.

the De Vere, 480 Cooper

This six-unit building on Cooper is an example of an older secondary build in Centretown.
Goad's 1888 map depicts 480-482 as a vacant lot.  According to the Ottawa Journal, it was still empty in the fall of 1905, when the rest of the block was filled in.

September 30 1905

Mr. Bangs' name rarely made the news and that, I'd like to think, was good news. The Might Directories listed him as a foreman with the Mortimer Company, a printing firm of long standing that had recently built a new shop on Wellington Street — this, where the storied Cecil Hotel had lately burned down.

Mr. Bangs built a two-and-a-half-storey double (much like the pair still standing directly to the west of the property) and moved into one of the units, #480. I'll assume he rented out #482 as an income property. Goad (1912) shows brick-on-wood-construction.

Scarcely a decade later, Louis De Vere Bangs converted his duplex into an apartment block and named it after himself. The De Vere Apartments debuted in pages of the 1914 Might Directory with all six units already rented. It's likely that Bangs rebuilt on the foundation of his original duplex — the apartments were erected on limestone blocks at a time when poured concrete was becoming popular.

Mr. Bangs did not take a flat at the De Vere. He moved to 18 Glen Avenue (still standing), a cosy two-and-a-half single in Old Ottawa South.