The Sunburst Building

I only recently noticed this yellow-brick building on the corner of Bank and Slater — here's a photo to make up for lost time.

I shouldn't be surprised that Urbsite has already written about the "Sunburst" (March 2013) — he's always on top of the cool stuff. Check out his detailed, article here, with some great old photos (old cars, streetcar tracks, snow!). He tells us that "The building at 129-131 Bank Street appears to have been built ca.1910 for the Matthews-Laird Co., meat suppliers, with two floors of offices and workshops to rent above."

The why-when-and-who of the Sunburst name remains unclear, though I wonder if someone was inspired by the striking design of the lintels capping the windows under the roof-line. Urbsite writes "The lintels that comprise keystones in a row of voussoir stones mimic the structure of an arch flattened out into a straight line - which although only a decorative device is visually unsettling if you think about how an arch is supposed to work."

The effect does remind one of the sun's rays, stretching past the horizon. The sunburst was a popular Art Deco motif.

"Biba" Sunburst logo, late 60s Deco Revival

Goad (1912) confirms brick construction. The block was already densely built-upon by the time the Sunburst was constructed. It replaced a pair of wooden, single-storey storefronts, the original 129 and 131 Bank.

Assuming that the 1909 Might Directory was compiled over the previous year, this clipping could push the build-date back to as early as 1908.

Mr. Matthews had a colourful selection of tenants!
After a bit more digging I found this...

The photo is attributed to Ottawa photographer William James Topley with a date of April 1906. Note the "Railway and Commercial Telegraph School" on the second floor. Topley's photo shows off those "voussoirs" to good effect. If the date is correct, it pushes the Sunburst's build date even further into the past.

a pine alone

White Pines, Rockcliffe Park 1908 — after W.J. Wilson

In the spring of 1881, the Ottawa Citizen printed two short pieces on two consecutive days. I reproduce them here.

[Monday, April 18 1881] 
The "Lone Pine" — This old landmark on the Bank Street Road, which was by order of the Vandals of the road company ordered to be levelled with mother earth, has since its downfall had its timbers put to a variety of uses. Several early residents of the locality have secured circular slabs of it, with which to make rustic tables and fancy articles to keep as mementos of the only remaining monarch of the primeval forest existing in the immediate vicinity of the city. There is some of it left yet.

The writer doesn't specify where along the "Bank Street Road" this once-majestic pine stood. That detail could have dovetailed nicely into a narrative of Bank Street's construction history. No matter. The date suggests that road-work either began or resumed as soon as the snow had melted, which is more useful than a kick in the head. The next day the following brief appeared...

[Tuesday, April 19 1881]
The "Lone Pine" — Under the above caption a paragraph appeared in yesterday's CITIZEN, and to-day from an experienced lumberman, none other than the Hon. James Skead [biography here], who should know something about such matters, gives the age of the "Monarch of the Forest" at from 275 to 280 years. Truly a venerable tree. The stump is 4ft. 6in. in diameter, and 13ft. 6in. in circumference. What a pity to cut it down. With the exception of one limb, the one blasted by lightning last summer, the "lone pine" might have lived out the present generation.

The "Lone Pine" was almost certainly a White Pine (Pinus strobus L.), the mainstay of the Ottawa Valley's lumber/timber trade. Red Pines (Pinus resinosa Ait.) were also taken, though their smaller size and reluctance to grow in exclusive tracts made them less desirable. The trunk of the Red Pine rarely exceeds 3 feet in diameter — Skead measured that of the Lone Pine's at four-and-a-half-feet across.

*      *      *

The photo at the head of this post shows a stand of White Pine in Rockcliffe Park, shot 110 years ago, apparently in the spring, given the patches of melting snow. The location reminds me of the Pavilion Meadow. If so, the trees are rooted in a layer of glacial till, spread atop the shaly bedrock of the Rockcliffe Formation.

The Ottawa area timber trade began in 1806 when Philemon Wright floated the first timber raft downriver from Gatineau to Quebec City. Thomas McKay acquired the lands that now make up Rockcliffe between 1829 and 1850. I think it's fair to guess that some time between 1806 and 1829, a good deal of the Park's original pine stands were logged in what may have been, in retrospect, a free-for-all.

We should also consider the likelihood that McKay himself cut trees, pines included, on these lands while they were in his possession. This would make virtually all of Rockcliffe's pines, including those in the photo, post-logging regrowth. I mention this in light of the Citizen writer's claim that the Lone Pine was "the only remaining monarch of the primeval forest existing in the immediate vicinity of the city." Exactly how accurate was this statement and did the writer's "immediate vicinity of the city" include Rockcliffe?

Zig-Zag Storefronts and The Norway Apartments

211-213 Bank, at Nepean — with the crazy brickwork on the storefronts. Goad indicates construction between 1878 and 1888, with a grocer and a druggist doing business here by the latter date. At some point, the building was extended back along Nepean, creating a decent-sized apartment block at #178.

That annex, "The Norway" can be seen to the left in this side view, clad in darker brick.

The Norway (entrance just to the left of the blue car) comprised thirteen units — numbered 1-12, 14 — and probably still does. It was built some time between 1916 and 1923.

Glow-fish Approved

Part of this year's "Glow Fair" mural at Bank and Lisgar, work-in-progress by the Fabulous Furry Laporte Brothers. Seaweed to the left is waiting for some fill and I feel a jellyfish about to happen over to the right. Gotta love those Bank Street hoardings that stay up year after year after...

the past inside the present

Bank Street and Laurier Avenue West, northwest corner, rear view

152-162 Bank, a cluster of older commercial buildings hunkers down amidst newer arrivals. The five-storey building at #162 replaced a row of low (1 to 2½ storey) wooden and brick-veneer storefronts.

A fanciful oddity appears directly north of this spot on Goad's sheet #41 for 1878...

A defiantly angled two-storey brick house at #142 Bank once sat in the space now occupied by the little parkette/vacant-lot — where pigeons congregate  beneath the "G.A. Snider Photographer" ghost sign. Woodburn (1875) gives "Rogers John, boarding house" and  "Binks Wm, printer" for that address.

the Road to Hell is — oh wait a sec

Ottawa Journal, March 30 1972

For me back in '72,  "reading the papers" meant checking the funnies and the horoscope, so I missed this one the first time around. An eleven block mall on Bank Street? My first reaction here is to wonder who those NCC guys were scoring their microdot from. I'll bet it was that guy with the french-cut who used to work Confederation Square.*

On closer reading, I realize that this "mall" thing was a proposal to narrow Bank from four lanes to two and emphasise public transit. Aren't we kind of halfway there already?

*You know the guy — skinny, poor-boy tees, flares, ratty little moustache.  You'd walk by him and he be like "haaassshhhhh", so quitely that you weren't even sure you'd heard him.