Saturday, 14 April 2018

2015: ghost door, 350 Elgin Street



This brick wall with its filled in doorway is the rear wall of 350 Elgin and faces onto Jack Purcell Lane at the corner of Waverley. The present structure replaced the smaller, wooden original, listed as a grocery store in 1888 (Goad). For many years this was the home of Stevenson's Drug Store.

From the Ottawa Journal, May 29 1953, on the occasion of a major refurbishment...
Stevenson's Drug Store, one of Ottawa's oldest and finest centre-town pharmacies, is completing the largest modernizing job in its long history.

Originally established in 1899 by Samuel J. Stevenson, a graduate of the Ontario College of Pharmacy in 1897, it was first situated on the north-west corner of Elgin at Waverley [lately Boushey's grocery store]. A few years later it moved across Waverley Street to its present location on the south-west corner....

Upon the death of Mr. Stevenson in December 1945, the business was carried on by his son Nelson...
After the Stevenson business vacated the premises, 350 Elgin was briefly the home of an ill-fated attempt by the Boushey family to operate a health food and supplement shop. It's now occupied by Pure Gelato, which seems to be doing well there.

Not too shabby for a brick wall.