Malachite and Salmon

644 rue de l'Eglise, Ottawa

 It's heartening to see how a splash of paint, a cared-for lawn, two planters and a handful of shrubs can bring such charm to an otherwise modest building.

 #644 is one of three identical six-unit blocks on rue de l'Eglise — its companions, 650 and 656 sit immediately to its right (you can see part of 650 on the left-hand edge of the photo) about a block south of Montreal Road. They were built some time between 1956 and 1958, part of a local post-war boom in affordable rental housing which saw the development of nearby Manor Park, Rockledge Terrace, Overbrook, and Eastview.

 And yes, I did mean to say "nearby" Eastview. De l'Eglise ("of the Church"), was named for Eastview's graceful Notre Dame Church* which stood at its north end, but the street never actually lay within the historic Eastview/Vanier city limits.

 The Village of Eastview was founded in 1908, combining the communities of Clandeboye, Clarkstown and Janeville. It became a town in 1913 and a city in 1963. In 1969 it was renamed Vanier to honour the recently deceased Governor General, Georges Vanier. The city became part of Ottawa under the 2001 amalgamation.

 The poorly understood borders of this former city-within-a-city are discussed in a post at VanierNow, sensibly titled "The Borders of Vanier." It begins...

Until Vanier’s amalgamation with Ottawa in 2001, the boundaries of this one square mile had remained constant since 1909. Yet (even after nearly 100 years) few people, if put on the spot, could draw Vanier’s outer edges correctly. Today, despite amalgamation, while the Vanier neighbourhood remains firmly imprinted within Ottawa, its precise boundaries remain elusive to many...

 I've marked the north end of de l'Eglise and #644 ("X") in red, on a 1970s map of Vanier hosted by VanierNow. Notre Dame Church is shown in green. (Click to enlarge.)

 Most Ottawans think of Vanier as being bounded on the east by St. Laurent Blvd, but apparently this was never the case. The city's southern half was contained by a line running from Ducharme Blvd at Montreal Road down to Belisle St at McArthur — never closer to St. Laurent than some 580 metres.

 From Montreal Road at Ducharme, the border ran east just past the grounds of Notre Dame de Lourdes Church, still 280 metres short of St. Laurent. And there it hung a left directly into Notre Dame Cemetery.

 Presumeably, this gerrymander made perfect sense to someone at the time, but it effectively cut the graveyard into two sections, one in then-Eastview and one in Ottawa. Thankfully, both church and cemetery now sit entirely in the same ward — #13, Rideau-Rockcliffe. Oh but look — according to geoOttawa, the Notre Dame Grotto, once the gem of church grounds, is now part of ward #12, Rideau-Vanier, hidden behind a high-rise and a cluster of row houses.

 Sitting just east of Vanier, de l'Eglise (formerly "Church Avenue") was indeed part of the City of Ottawa when #644 was built.  By then Ottawa extended as far east as Blair Road (then "Skead") — Eastview/Vanier was truly a city inside a city.

 As to that sliver of Ottawa between Ducharme and St. Laurent, some call it Castle Heights. It sort of bleeds into Overbrook toward the south. Some even claim that the Heights cross St. Laurent, stretching even further east, while others call that land Forbes. Whatever — just don't call it Vanier.

*          *          *

 Anyone researching the history of Eastview/Vanier should note that while de l'Eglise was originally called "Church Avenue," there was another road of the same name in the northern part of Eastview "proper." Oddly I can find no indication that it ever featured a church. It was eventually renamed St. Jacques.

Ottawa City Directory

*The original stone church was built in 1887-88, designed by the Canon Bouillon who patterned it after the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes in France. It was destroyed by fire in May of 1973, along with the adjoining St. Jean Scholasticate (1901). There were no deaths or injuries, but all documents, including the books in the Scholasticate library as well as the archives, were lost. Only the church’s bells were recovered from the ashes, and they were subsequently incorporated into a new church, built in 1975 at the site of the original.

Taisho-era House

photo-comparison from "the Taisho photographer's house" by Hamish Campbell

 The black-and-white portion of this image comes from a century-old trove of glass plate photographs discovered by Tokyo-based photographer Hamish Campbell. The original owner of the house was himself an avid photographer who converted one of his closets into a darkroom.

 Of these images, Campbell writes...

In a secluded bamboo grove in northern Japan, I stumbled across an old family homestead. On site were over 200 glass plate negatives dating back to the Taisho era of Japan [the Emperor Taishō, reigned 1912-1926] showing the construction of the house and the lives of those who lived there for many years. In these images the passage of time is both clearly evident and a blurred line, as we see the house both as a busy family nexus and a quiet companion to nature as it is returns to the earth. Exhibited at Artsite Gallery, Sydney, from May 7th-29th 2016.

 Selected images from this series can be viewed at the photographer's website. Additional discussion appears at Petapixel.

 While many of the images in Campbell's trove feature domestic scenes, the photograph below is of architectural interest. It shows builders assembling the house's timber frame using traditional joinery methods. Carefully cut tongues are hammered into corresponding slots — no nails needed.

building the Taisho photographer's house, collection of Hamish Campbell

Haunted Houses

 Some houses, a castle and a church, designed by Canadian street/sticker artist "Haunty."

Paint on Brick

106 Cartier Street

 On the subject of exterior brick-painting, a friend tells me that "properly done, it protects the primer." Which begs the question...

 This green works well enough with the dark roof and white trim. It makes the upthrusting shrubs (cypress?) and vertiginous side-staircase appear to sink into the architecture. The flattened roof-top is probably original, though older photos (geoOttawa 1958-1991) show light-coloured shingles.

 The house is typical of the many two-and-a-half storey, red-brick-on-a-limestone-base, asymmetrical, dawn-of-the-20th homes one finds in Centretown and Sandy Hill. I'm having trouble dating it, what with some ambiguities in the City Directories and revision-date issues on the Goad maps. The 1901 Directory indicates "vacant lots" between a "House" at or near Lewis and #110 at Waverley.  The 1909 edition lists an Archibald K. McLean at #106. 1909 doesn't name spouses or indicate ownership, but it looks as if Mr. McLean could well have been the first occupant and likely owner some time after 1901.

from Goad; Ottawa Vol. 1, sheet 68 "reprint May 1912"

 This Goad map shows #106, mid-block between Lewis and Waverley on the west side of Cartier. The row houses across the street have been replaced by 99 Cartier, a six-storey apartment building ("the Norwood") and the adjacent duplex (105-107) is now a parking lot. Earlier maps suggest that the area occupied by Minto Park was designated as such from the get-go, rather like Anglesea Square in Lowertown.

 So many houses of this size and style have been divided into apartments (#106 boasts three mailboxes on its front porch) that it's hard to picture them as single family, or indeed single person dwellings. But they were.

 Some time between 1909 and 1913, Mr. McLean vacated the house and it was taken over by a Miss Elizabeth Kennedy. In 1914 Elizabeth was somehow replaced by Margaret of-like-surname, who continued to live there through the 20s, 30s and 40s, listed as the owner. She was eventually joined by her sister, Agnes Cornelia Kennedy, who died in September of 1944, leaving her estate to Margaret. Margaret R. Kennedy died in February of 1949, marking the end of a family occupancy that lasted through two World Wars, the intervening Jazz Age and the Great Depression.

 I'm guessing that the steep staircase with its fiberglass canopy is the private approach to a small, third-storey apartment. The Golden Triangle hosts several examples of exterior access to upper-floor apartments. Some look far worse than this.