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 The row houses across the street have been replaced by 99 Cartier, a six-storey apartment building ("the Norwood") and the adjacent duplex (105-107) is now a parking lot.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.