191 McLeod, "The Mack"

No really, it's the pole not the building.

 191 McLeod (at Elgin) first appeared in the 1912 Might Directory, listed simply as the "Mackenzie Apartments," sans occupants. The next year, six tenants were listed. Residents of "The Mack" would have enjoyed streetcar service from Elgin into downtown, Rideau Street and the Market. On weekends, "the cars" would take day-trippers to Rockcliffe Park and Britannia Bay — and in winter, folks could cross the street to visit the recently opened Victoria Museum.

 Also, you got to say "I'm hangin' at the Mack."

 A modest 1½ storey house stood on this very spot before the Mackenzie was built. It faced onto Elgin and bore the number 410. In the same block, the Holbrook Apartments at 404 Elgin were built circa 1915-'16, taking the place of two 2½ storey houses — I don't think the Ontario Municipal Board even existed back then. In both cases, the demolished homes were likely the first "permanent" buildings on their respective sites. Oh the irony...

 Here's a picture of scrappy little 408 Elgin, hunkered down between the rear of the MacKenzie to the left and the Holbrook to the right. A nearly identical house once stood on the site of the Mack. The Holbrook displaced two such houses. The building on the corner of Gladstone (with the Mac's store) is original to its site.

252 Metcalfe — Booth House in the Snow

 John Rudolphus Booth, rail and lumber king, built this, his downtown home between 1906 and 1909. Booth House is, if you will,  a balls-out example of Queen Anne Revival. The Canadian Register describes architect John W.H. Watts' design as an...

"asymmetrical massing, set under a lively roofline with intersecting ridges, shaped gables, dormers and a tall, ribbed chimney stack... [and with] projecting features including the square tower, bay windows, porches, wings, sunrooms and verandahs." 

 Lively roofline, meet tall, ribbed chimney stack. Red brick construction, Venetian window treatments and the house's placement on a corner lot also garner the CR's mention.

 See Wikipedia on Booth,  and a 2011 Ottawa Citizen article which mentions damage to the house sustained during the June 2010 earthquake.

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 Later...

Portrait of J.R. Booth, artist and date unknown

 "The importance of John Rudolphus Booth to Ottawa cannot be overstated. While the likes of Philemon Wright, E.B. Eddy, W.G. Perley, Erskine Bronson and John Egan were known as lumber barons, Booth was king..."

 Bruce Deachman has written an appreciation of J.R. Booth for the Ottawa Citizen on the occasion of the donation of the above portrait to the Bytown Museum — a gift of the Domtar Corporation. The painting will go on public display on February 3 of the coming year.

147 Patterson Avenue

 

 The Patterson Creek area of the Glebe is dense with late-Victorian houses, 20th Century showpieces and the odd modernist box. And then we have this. Until recently, it was half-hidden behind the trunk of a massive maple. 147 Patterson makes me think of a bungalow, crammed sideways into a narrow lot. Or is it the house that makes lot look narrow? Is this infill? On seeing my photo, a friend wondered "Are people supposed to climb in and out of the bottom window?"

 Many houses on this block back directly onto Strathcona Avenue, as does #147. Here is Google Street's view of its rear(?) aspect...

Google Street View, April 2009

 Refer to the little map in the lower left corner to see how the Patterson/Strathcona interval is only one lot deep. 

 Note 147's low, hipped roof, its slender, single chimney, the stucco finish (so much for that brick out front), the two side doors "front" and "back" and those inscrutable window placements. I'm wondering whether this thing wasn't purpose-built as a duplex.

 I have drummed up a handful of facts about this lot, but I'm far from uncovering a definite history. Goad ("reprinted, June 1912" sheet 145) depicts #147 as the only vacant lot remaining on the north side of this block of Patterson — at that time, the south side was still mostly unbuilt. The City Directory for 1916 skips 147 but does list the adjacent 145 and 149. The 1923 Dirctory does list 147, with a single resident, one Samuel Rosenthal*.

 So, a house was built at #147 some time between 1916 and 1923. But was it this one? Was the original house razed or was it modified? This house puzzles me deeply. If I find out anything more about it, I'll be sure to pass it on.

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*This may have been the Samuel Rosenthal who became Ottawa's first Jewish aldermen in 1902. He represented Victoria Ward for nine years.

Victoria was one of Ottawa's original wards, encompassing Parliament Hill, Lebreton Flats, Mechanicsville and Hintonburg.

From a biography of his mother, "Samuel became a local sports hero and the first Jew to hold municipal office in Ottawa. Elected as an alderman in 1902, he sat for four terms, was returned again in 1921, and also served as a magistrate."

487 Lewis Street

 I don't have a precise date for 487 Lewis but an informed guess would place it in the late 1920s. It's visible in the 1928 aerial photos, and newspaper ads for its business tenants start to appear in 1930. This would make it an ambitious example of early cider-block construction in this city.

 In its time, #487 has housed a variety of workshop/store enterprises, including but not limited to gas, oil and lubrication, a woodworker, sheet metal construction, an upholsterer, plumbing and heating, a stationer, and an air-conditioning and refrigeration business. It was last occupied by a gay bathhouse. The east wall, seen above, has borne the handiwork of many local graffiti writers.

 Current work reveals a steel frame (presumably with wood-framed interior walls) and a cinder-block exterior, originally veneered in brick. The view from Lewis Street suggests that the floors were poured concrete.

 I know this might look like a careful and protracted demolition but I've found a City of Ottawa document describing the job as the "exterior/interior alterations on all floors of a 3 retail/office building" at an estimated cost of $600,000.00.

117 MacDonald: The Merrill

 The Merrill is one of those six-plexes — you know, the kind with five apartments. These little post-war walk-ups don't usually have names but this one does, so there. A newspaper search reveals that a Mr. and Mrs. H. Merrill Macartney were living at this address in 1960. Sadly, we know this because in September of that year, their six-year old son Billy died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage while getting dressed for school. Billy attended Elgin Street Public and would have just started either kindergarten or grade one.

  Was The Merrill named after Mr. Macartney? Apparently so. The building was built circa 1955 and first appears in the '56 city directory with four units rented and a fifth listed thus — "3*Macartney H Merrill (Isobel)" where the asterisk denotes ownership. This was before the days of condominiums so we can assume that Merrill Macartney owned the building entire building, not just his unit.

  117 MacDonald sits immediately to the north of the former "slanty-shanty" lot at #121.