the Warrington

the Warrington Apartments, 415 Elgin Street, July 2016

 The Warrington first appears on the 1912 revision of the Goad fire insurance map, sitting alone on the east side of Elgin between McLeod and Park Avenue. Upon completion, it faced the newly built Victoria Memorial Museum Building, now home to our Museum of Nature. Ads and announcements in the Ottawa Journal suggest that the Warrington was welcoming tenants as early as the fall of 1910. The Might directory confirms full occupancy by 1913 — nine households (eight plus a janitor?)

a detail from Goad (revised 1912) sheet #70

 I was unable to find out anything saucy or spectacular about this building. People moved in, they lost things, hired maids, got parking tickets, fled from a small fire in February of 1951 and died of unrelated causes. One story from the spring of 1917 does remind us of the state of telephony at that time — the little guy versus the telecoms, eh?

 the Ottawa Journal, April 16 1917, pg. 12

 Bell argued that a common-use phone in the hallway was in a public space and that precedents for such payphone placements had already been set in buildings in other cities. These days, a free telephone in an apartment corridor would seem odd indeed — and would surely get ripped off the wall in less than a week.