The Prince Rupert in The Glebe

   The 25-unit Prince Rupert at 585 O'Connor first appeared in the 1915 Might Directory, misidentified as the smaller, older Clifton next door. By the following year, the mix-up had been sorted out and #585 was nearly full.

1886 Rideau Garden Drive

   Rideau Garden Drive borders the left bank of the Rideau River at the north end of Old Ottawa South. It was one of the last strips of land to be developed in that part of the neighbourhood, just before the George McIlraith Bridge was built.

   Constructed in the early 60s, ads for these 3, 4, and 5 bedroom "deluxe custom homes" began to appear in the late summer of 1962 and continued to run into early 1964. The Rideau Garden Drive development featured an assortment of period houses including low-slung bungalows, some with stylishly integrated garages and carports.  Split-levels like the one in our picture were also trending when Uri Gagarin orbited the earth (once!) and JFK sat in the White House.

   Rideau Garden Drive snakes through the middle of this 1965 aerial view — #1886 is circled in red. The McIlraith Bridge appears as a steel skeleton soon to join Main Street to Smyth Road. Materials from the City of Ottawa state that the bridge was "built" in 1964, but if this geoOttawa view is correctly dated, then '64 was at best the date that construction began.

   If there were any trees along the drive, they would have been "landscaped" saplings, nothing larger. Half a century later, Rideau Garden Drive is graced with many mature trees, blending nicely with the wooded shorline.

"230 Ogilvy Charles"

 Well here's an unexpected find. I was glancing over the listings for Lisgar Street in the 1901 Might Directory (my idea of fun, haha!) and this entry caught my eye — "230 Ogilvy Charles" — no comma, no other notation. Could it be?

 Born in Edinburgh in 1861, Charles Ogilvy came to Canada with his family two years later. He opened his first dry-goods store in 1887, at 92 Rideau Street. In 1907 he moved shop to 126 Rideau, into a building designed by the noted Ottawa architect W.E. Noffke and his partner George William Northwood. Charles Ogilvy Ltd. (or simply "Ogilvy's") grew in physical size, number of outlets, and reputation through the first half of the 20th century.

 A fire at the flagship store in the dying days of 1969 marked the beginning of a slow decline for the business. Simpson's, Eaton's and The Bay proved overwhelming competition for a store  renowned for its well-made but timelessly unexciting fashions. Ogilvy's  closed in the '90s, and sat empty for years thereafter. In 2013 the building was carefully demolished pending the reconstruction of its facade as part of an expanded Rideau Centre.

...le temple qui fut, April 2013

\

deuxième vue, April 2013

 And what does this have to do with 230 Lisgar Street? Was "Ogilvy Charles" the local retail legend or just some dude with the same name? A bit of nosing around vindicates the former.

Charles Ogilvy, 1901

 In 1901, "230 Ogilvy Charles" was still eight years away from opening his resplendent temple of retail at the corner of Rideau and Nicholas. Here are a few lead-up dates for the house on Lisgar...

1884 — Charles Ogilvy, a clerk, is boarding at 80 Albert St.
1887 — Charles opens his first dry-goods store.
1888 — 230 Lisgar appears on the Goad map as a perfunctory, 2½ storey brick building, a narrow house on a narrow lot, with the usual summer kitchen out back. See image below.
1892-'93 — Miss Florence Benson of 230 Lisgar is teaching voice and piano, "concert engagements accepted." She will eventually marry, move to Montreal and sing in a church choir.
1897-1901 — Newspapers and the Might Directory confirm Charles as residing at 230 Lisgar, indeed owner of the namesake store. The Ottawa Journal further confirms a Mrs. Ogilvy [Lily Allison] again as of 1897, active with the King's Daughters and Sons, a Christian philanthropic organization.

230 Lisgar appears as the right-most of six similar houses, upper half of image.

 During his Lisgar Street tenure,  Charles was operating his store out of its old location at 92 Rideau.

 The Ogilvys eventually quit this austere little house for another in Sandy Hill — just as plain, but closer to the store. #201 Wilbrod (white house, middle of image) has sat empty, its doors and windows boarded for about a decade now.

 Back in Centretown, the Faloon family operated a boarding house at 230 Lisgar from the 1930s into WWII. In 1935 a visitor from Denver Colorado mistook a door at the top of the rear stairs for a washroom. She fell to her death, breaking her neck and smashing her skull. On March 26 1940 the house served as a polling station in that year's Federal Election — the Liberals won.

 The building has since been split into two apartments. I can't pin down the date of the strange brick extension at the front of the building — I'm sure it seemed like a good an idea at the time.

 For those interested, there is a Facebook page devoted to Charles Ogilvy Ltd. Ken Elder has written a terrific little history of the store, pdf here. Oh, and Andrew Elliott has an awesome appreciation here (be sure to click on his links!)

 The Ogilvys spent their final years in a lovely house at 488 Edison Avenue just west of Churchill Avenue.

 

the Ottawa Journal

the Ottawa journal, Jan. 19 1944

Requiescant in pace.

182-184 Lisgar Street

 Sitting between an unmatched pair of red brick walk-ups, #182-184 dates to the 1901-1909 time-frame, according to the Might Directories. Goad shows a building resembling this one in place as of 1912, when the lot sat behind the Protestant Orphans' Home. The latter faced onto Elgin and spanned the block from Lisgar to Cooper. Urbsite's article "Coming Soon" includes a photo which reveals 182-184 peering out from behind the north end of the orphanage.

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.

*     *     *

*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.

121 MacDonald, the "Slanty Shanty"

 I took this photo of 121 MacDonald at the corner of Frank, in April of 2006. By summer of the following year it had been replaced by a lower, broader home in the modern style.

 This house appears in Might Directories at least as far back as 1901, when it was listed (though not numbered) as the home of one John Eldridge. Immediately to its south lay an extensive lumber yard.

 The two-and-a-half storey wooden structure was set atop a stone foundation which, over the decades, sank unevenly into soil. Underlying Leda Clay, a relic of the Champlain seabed, was the likely culprit. The house would have been unlivable by the time it was demolished.

 Here's a view of the new 121 MacDonald...

The Kelso Apartments

 The City Directories make it pretty clear that the Kelso — 51-53 MacLaren at MacDonald in the Golden Triangle — was built in or just before 1913. The 1912 Might Directory lists those two addresses as belonging to an occupied semi-detached. In 1913 they were "vacant." The next year they were explicitly associated with the "Kelso Apts" and boasting six renters. That number would soon swell to fourteen, including a caretaker (the apartments are listed as 1-7, 7a, 8-12, and 14.) The Kelso boasts a small but tasteful side-entrance numbered 17 MacDonald Street.

 Here is a detail from Goad (May 1912, sheet 51) showing the original double at 51-53 just before it was demolished. I've highlighted it in red (east is on top.)

 Notice the odd skew on the north (left) side of the lot. This was occasioned by the wedged shape of block 281 and is preserved in the angle of the Kelso's rear wall, which evidently sits right on the property line.

 For such an imposing building, the Kelso's first rental ads were brief and low-key. Here is an Ottawa Journal placement for December 1, 1913...

 

 Worth noting: the address has been simplified to #53, and apartments vary in size by three rooms. "Phone Janitor" seems an unpromising touch, but with a big, empty building to watch over, said custodian may not have had much to do with his days but answer calls. Rents and phone numbers are typical of the time.

"You again!"

 The Kelso signaled a move away from the gracile, asymmetric whimsies of the late 1800s and toward the more modernly massed walk-ups that would evolve between 1910 and 1950. Still it clings to its Victorian red brickwork and its stone foundation, the last gasps of Empire.

 I can find little in the way of spectacular goings-on at the Kelso over the decades, only the account of a furnace blast on November 7, 1946. Perhaps it was the first really chilly night of the year? Someone (that janitor!) over-stoked the coal furnace, and shortly after 10:00 PM a build-up of coal gas exploded, blowing the top off the furnace and knocking down various pipes and conduits. There was no fire and no-one was hurt.

 Oh... speaking of evolving apartment buildings, if you look back up at my photo, you can see "Ten the Driveway" (1969) at the east end of Cooper Street, looming in the background — the typical high-rise fare for Ottawa in the late 1960s and into the '70s, when tall was all!

77 MacLaren Street

 Flat-roofed but with a bold, gambreled front dormer, 77 MacLaren appears to date from between 1884 and '88. The house saw mention in the Ottawa Journal as early as 1898. In 1899, the owner advertised for a "general" servant (no washing or ironing.) The 1901 City Directory lists the address as home to Alex G. McCormick (a grain merchant.)

 Dr. John Cadenhead Glashan
(b. Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1844), mathematician, writer, teacher and eventually school inspector, had moved into #77 by May of 1931 but died a year later of appendicitis/peritonitis at the age of 88. Glashan Public School on Arlington Avenue bears his name. His widow, the much-loved Anne, celebrated her 98th birthday in the house on December 8 1937. Sadly I can't find a proper obituary for her.

 During WWII the address devolved into a rooming/flop house known as "Charles Manor" and later, "MacLaren Lodge." Things really went downhill after the war. In April of 1954, the house was raided as a brothel. Arrests included two prostitutes and two "found-ins."

 By 1960, 77 MacLaren had been tidied up and converted to office use (the Community Planning Association of Canada) — it presently hosts a small skulk of psychologists.

On a Ridge

L-R 685 & 683 Echo Drive, rear of houses facing on to Riverdale, July 2016

 One in the Modern style, and the other less so — these two houses sit on a ridge of antique fluvial sand and silt at the very southern tip of Old Ottawa East, just north of the Oakland Heights section of Old Ottawa South.

 I'm having trouble dating #685 (late '20s?), but the original #683 was described as "new" in August of 1934.

August 25 1934, The Ottawa Journal

 "Designed by [an] architect" may sound like padding, but compared to its staid and foursquare neighbour, 683 was indeed a design experiment, grafting an unconventionally massed house onto a small and acutely sloped lot. If you're curious, you can see both 683 and (former) 685 in this Street View from 2009.

 The present 683, rest assured, was also designed by an architect. The award-winning Christopher Simmonds is responsible for some striking single and multi-unit dwellings in the Ottawa area. One of his better-known designs is "The Eddy Condominiums" in Hintonburg.

 Compare my photo to this Street View showing the two original houses as seen from Riverdale, in simpler times.

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.

Our House, 1909

The Ottawa Evening Journal, Saturday Sept. 11 1909

 This pastiche of a Queen Anne Revival house was published as a full-page domicile-themed advertising feature on on page 10 of the September 11 1909 Ottawa Evening Journal. It looks like the sort of thing one can still find in Sandy Hill and the Golden Triangle, perhaps more so.

 I came across this gem while hunting for information about F.X. Laderoute, hence the highlight on his name. Laderoute was a respected member of Ottawa's real estate community and was instrumental in the early development of Overbrook. He also kept pigeons and grew prize-winning peonies.

 Festooning the awnings and dormers, the gables and gambrels, the pediment, the porch, and nearly every window are twenty ads for products and services related to the building, buying, cleaning, heating, and painting of houses — and then the cooking of dinner. I assembled this view from fourteen oversized screenshots and tarted up the sharpness and levels somewhat. View full-size to see who was flogging their wares in 1909.

 And now, with a house that size, shouldn't those two head indoors and make some more babies?

the Franconna

322 Frank Street (originally 74 Frank), July 2016

 The Franconna (with a total of three n's) Apartments, previously the Belgrave Terrace Apartments, was built in 1903 as a home for lumberman Robert Hurdman on the occasion of his retirement. He died a year later. Chris Ryan has done a terrific job of researching the history of the building and its subsequent owners. He includes the story of the Franconna's bizarre, mismatched rear annex, part of which was shaved off, creating one of the oddest looking buildings on Gladstone. That's the annex in red brick to the right of the image. Read Chris's article, "A (Bel)grave Situation" here.

Genteel with a touch of shabby — view full-size to see where roof, dormer-gable and turret-bay have been hacked into to accommodate skylights and air conditioners.

Three on Holmwood

 To the people of Holmwood east... some of us actually do feel your pain and understand the  crap you've endured over the decades (and in the last few years especially.) We salute you — keep those aspidistras flying!

85 Holmwood Avenue, July 201

81 Holmwood Avenue, July 2016

43 Holmwood Avenue, July 2016

To Loom

Byward Market — Dalhousie & George looking east, July 2016

 I don't remember any of those tall ones from when I was a kid. View full-sized to feel engulfed.

Sunday Morning Vanier

 Really, it's too nice out to spend half the day in the library looking up the dates on old houses. Here are some sunny shots from a bike trip to the north side of Vanier, toward what used to be Clarkstown.

105 Vachon, June 2016

 Who lived here — Winston Smith or Brenda Starr? The fake masonry (troweled cement, I'm guessing) is pure audacity.

35 Laval, June 2016

 A roof on a roof on a house on a roof? Once you get past the peculiar facade, 35 Laval is a very conventional two-and-a-half storey dwelling. Still, I want to lean a pair of skis on it.

75 Vachon, June 2016

 A variation on the classic white cube — and somehow vinyl siding is hip again.

29 Charlevoix, June 2016

  29 Charlevoix sits on an angled lot where Laval (your left) meets Landry. Indeed, the south wall (chimney, stop sign) is itself angled to match Landry's path. Aerial photos suggest that #29 has been standing since at least 1928.

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.

Little Shop

315 Somerset East, Ottawa ON

 This oddity seems to have less floor-space than my own modest one-bedroom flat. The facade bespeaks a career in retail, the siding is recent and, I am confident, vinyl. I am less sure whether someone actually lives here. This house, if we can call it that, sits on the eastern, downhill stretch of Somerset East between Chapel St and Blackburn Ave — that little valley in the heart of what we aren't supposed to call the Ottawa U "student ghetto."

 The valley is actually a fluvial channel, cut by the proto-Ottawa River, between two sandy terraces — "old" Sandy Hill to the north and the smaller Mann Avenue ridge to the south. This happened a very long time ago. Later, when the Rideau Canal was being built, a stream called Neville's Creek ran from a swampy patch of ground near Elgin St, eastward to the southern end of the Rideau Canal's "Deep Cut" at the southern tip of what is now the Ottawa U campus. It cascaded down to the now-corner of Mann and King Edward, thence toward now-Somerset, following the valley to now-Strathcona Park, emptying into what continues to be the Rideau River.

The topography on this portion of the Charles E. Goad fire insurance map (1902-'09) shows part of the ancient channel (Colonel By's "natural gully") as it crosses the chart from the southwest to the northeast. Anyone who has walked or driven the length of Somerset East will recognise the spectacular drop between Henderson and Sweetland, as Somerset dives into the channel. In this view, the roads of southern Sandy Hill have been surveyed but not necessarily built upon, and Mann Ave is still considered to be part of Gladstone.

The portion of Sandy Hill south of Laurier (then-Theodore) saw scant development before 1900, but experienced a building boom which spread roughly downhill from the northwest to the southeast during the first three decades of the 20th Century. By mid-century, the southward sprawl back uphill to Mann Ave was complete.

The large buildings to either side of #315 are visible in aerial photos from 1928, but poor resolution precludes a clear sighting of the little shop itself (for indeed, that's what it was.) We can see it in an image from thirty years later (highlighted here in green, image via geoOttawa.) The shop seems to cling to it's neighbour — in fact the two are separated by an air-gap of no more than a foot.

#315 made local news during January of 1945, when on the 19th of that month, the Ottawa Journal reported that...

"Pleading not guilty to a charge of breaking and entering the shop of Hiram Atcheson, 315 Somerset street east, and stealing $3 worth of of cigarettes, Raymond Allen, 18, of no fixed address, was remanded to January 26 for hearing, by Magistrate Strike this morning."

Exactly three days later, the Journal would note that one Angelo Sirna, age 17, of nearby 31 Greenfield Ave had been arrested on the same charge having allegedly broken into the same store and stolen cigarettes in the same amount. I'm thinking that a) the two crimes were somehow related and b) Raymond ratted on Angelo.

And then there's this, from November of 1974...

Yes, some guys really did dress like that in 1974.

The Ottawa City Directories confirm that Hiram Atcheson operated a barbershop at #315 as early as 1941. It was then common enough for such shops to double as convenience-stores, selling candy, tobacco, sodas and such non-perishable doodads as lighters, pocket knives and nail clippers. For much of the '40s, Hiram and his wife Edna lived next to the shop at #313, actually a ground-floor rear apartment in the adjacent building at Somerset East and Chapel.

Atcheson moved out of #313 some time around 1950 but continued to cut hair at #315 until 1971, a tenure of at least thirty years. The shop sat vacant for a year or two until Gerard Levesque, his sideburns and his double-knits, briefly converted the shop into their campaign headquarters. A courier service assumed an equally short tenancy in 1975 and then a "home care"[?] company moved in and stayed until 1990. Thereafter, the Directories simply stop listing #315 altogether, up to the year 2000, the most recent edition held by the Ottawa Public Library.