Monuments, More Modestly Priced than a Mausoleum

September 18 1913, Ottawa Citizen

Oh look, it's that nice young man with the pictures of all the different gravestones — and who do you suppose "Connell" is (was?), up there in the back? ... The boy's right though. A mausoleum is like a condo for dead people. What happens if you die and then they jack up the fees?

Rupert Brown's monument lot was on the south side of Laurier Avenue, a bit east of Bay Street. It appears as a "Stone Mason's Yard" on this detail from Goad's sheet #42, May 1912 reprint.

By 1933, much of block 263 (Goad's designation above, blue box, below) was still recognizable, though Brown's (gold highlight) monuments were gone, as was his little wooden office that once stood on the north-east corner of the lot. Only the sheds at the back of the property remained.

Rupert Brown's former monument display would bide the decades that followed as parking lot, waiting for Bay Laurier Place to be built (Assaly, 1984). That 20-storey condo tower would take over the space and then some. It boasts its own free-standing above-ground parking building, facing onto Gloucester Street, displacing eight row-homes on that facing and resembling a condo for cars. (Can cars buy condos? Are they even allowed to have money?)

Today, only two of the block's original buildings are left — both appeared on Goad's 1912 sheet. These are the 3-row at 339-341-343 Gloucester, and the single at 220 Lyon (at Gloucester).

But I have to say, there's something oddly familiar about the Brown name, having to do with monuments... will get back to you on that.