F.X. sells the Rectory

341 Riverdale, Old Ottawa South, adapted from Google Street View, April 2015

 Prolonging our glance at commodious houses (and the career arc of F.X. Laderoute) consider this placement from the August 1, 1950 Ottawa Journal...

"F.X. LADEROUTE
OTTAWA SOUTH, 341 Riverdale, brick and stucco, living room, fuel alcoved fireplace, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms second floor, two bedrooms third floor, two complete bathrooms. Possession September. Price $10,000. 292 Laurier Ave. W. 2-1342"

 This address occupies the NE corner of Riverdale and Brighton Avenues. I've relied on Street View for a portrait because the house can't be seen from the street at this time of year, thanks in part to a gangling Manitoba Maple sprawled across the front of the lot.

341 Riverdale, July 2016

 The house seems to be a variation on the American Foursquare plan, with more modest eaves, and a simple porch (rebuilt wood, original brick painted over) standing in for a full verandah. Twinned front and back shed dormers and a half-hipped roof help turn the attic into something roomy enough to call a third floor, while faded turquoise siding probably hides some sad-looking stucco. In better days the small yard was planted with birch and maple — a lilac bush stood by the front path.

 #341 isn't listed in Might 1923 but it does appear (barely) as a smudge on the 1928 aerial photos, when a large swath of (now "Old") Ottawa South was still pasture and hay-field. This would bracket the construction date to the mid-1920s.

 Between 1931 and 1945, the house served as the rectory for St. Margaret Mary Catholic Parish in Ottawa South. According to the Parish website...

"In July of 1931 St Margaret Mary’s school was built at the cost of $30,000, and a house at 341 Riverdale was purchased as the first rectory at a cost of $6,500. It was sold in 1945 and the present rectory immediately next to the church was purchased for $8,000."

 Four years after it was acquired, the rectory was the target of a break-in and robbery. From the Ottawa Evening Journal, July 19 1935...

 Apparently, Father Hogan was kicked and punched when he had the audacity to laugh at a comment made by one of the robbers. The latter seem to have been a crew specifically targeting churches and rectories. I can find no evidence of their capture.

 While the parish website indicates that the house was sold in 1945, the Might directories show that its first non-clerical occupants were renters. This makes me wonder if the Church still owned the house as of 1950, when Laderoute placed his ad. #341 did sell, to William Farrah and his wife Affifi.

 Francis-Xavier Laderoute — self-styled "F.X." and referred to simply as "X" by his colleagues — was an Arnprior native. He attended school there and later studied at Ottawa's Willis Business College. In 1898, he married Lola Louise Corbett. F.X. was an important developer of old Overbrook, and Lola Street enshrines the memory of his wife in that east end community.

 We find early evidence of his business doings in March of 1905, when a small ad appears in the Journal, offering "real estate, insurance and loans" services from an office at 174 Bank street. Two years later, in his early 30s, he reappears as an agent for Coleman Silver Mines. I don't know how well the Coleman initiative ("180 acres of valuable mining land") fared, but many such schemes ended in grief. By the end of the decade, he was clearly focused on Ottawa's booming (and more reliable) real estate market.

Francis-Xavier Laderoute

 In the years that followed, F.X. would rise to a position of respect and influence in the local real estate community. According to his obituary, he "...was said to know land values like nobody else... [and] was instrumental in building a number of Ottawa's stately homes and subdivided some of Ottawa's suburbs that are now in the heart of the city."

 F.X. was a devout Catholic (and a K. of C. fourth degree), an avid golfer, gardener and stamp collector. He would have been roughly 76 years old when he oversaw the sale of 341 Riverdale. He died on December 15, 1959 at the age of 85.

 #341 is presently unoccupied, fenced off and in a state of neglect.

Update:
 I cycled past #341 on a sunny day in the fall of 2016. It had been largely knocked down — a demolition crew was feeding great sections of wall and floor directly into the largest (and loudest) wood chipper I've ever seen.