White Paint on Brick

     There's no denying — back in its heyday, Metcalfe Street was one swanky strip of real estate. Now somewhat sandwiched between a pair of apartment blocks, #200 boasted some notable neighbours in the early 1900s. Here's a detail from the Might Directory for 1912, page 114...

     Here, Alfred M. Scott finds himself book-ended by a pair of physicians, not far from a "Sir" and an "Honourable", and a mere pigskin's toss from that well-known local athlete (lacrosse and yes, football) and businessmen (president of Pritchard Andrews Co.), J. Arthur Seybould. And we haven't even looked across the street yet — seriously, someone should write a book.
     That said, I don't think that anyone will be writing a book about Alfred M. Scott any time soon. The man was either mysterious, retired, or both. We can confirm his residence at 200 Metcalfe between 1912 and 1916, but during that time the Might Directories fail to associate his name with any sort of job.

     A gap in my records brings us to the year 1923 but not to any A.M. Scott.  That year appears to show the old Scott house divided into two apartments, with  a Thomas P. Murphy in one, and Herbert and Percy Sims sharing the other — Herbert being listed as another "phys" — Ear, Nose and Throat. Were these houses built over some kind of surgical anomaly?
     A "Heart and Blood Pressure" man moved into the digs in the early '50s and then, in a break with tradition, Thomas Shipman Realtors took over #200 in early 1956. By the 1970s, 200/200a housed a weight-loss clinic and a chiropractors' office. To this day, the building cleaves to its somewhat alternative medical heritage as the address of Advanced Wellness (main floor, "suite 100.")

June 1970 — Ottawa Journal

     
"...Lie on a lounge, bring a book, a sandwich, a martini, or some conversation and a friend..." Here come the seventies!


     I should mention that on the 19th of September 1913, the Ottawa Journal published the following social notice...

Mr. and Mrs. Alfred M. Scott, who have been on an eight weeks' cruise on the Rideau Lakes in their motor boat, The Porcupine, have returned to town.

     It's literally the only sentence I've been able to find that hints at the sort of thing the Alfred M. Scotts did apart from nothing — and bully for them I say!  ;-)