Wellington Street Part 4: As the City grows, so does Wellington (1880-1912)

   [Show/Hide Contents]

• 1880 Renaming of George Street, Victoria Terrace, and Richmond Road
• Railway Crossings
• Great big fires
• 1908 Renaming of Richmond Road through Hintonburg
• Wellington Street Vidauct
• Wellington widening and paving through Hintonburg
• Clearing up the 'middle section' of Wellington
• 1912 Re-renaming of George Street and Victoria Terrace
• References

Before our foray into the east end of Wellington Street in the previous post, we were talking in Part 2 about the first roads in Ottawa and how the fledgling town's road network began to develop in the new neighbourhood that would one day be called LeBreton Flats.

In this post we'll look at the period from about 1880 to 1912, during which time rail lines cross over Wellington at grade, fires ravage the western part of the street, Ottawa absorbs various suburbs, and an excessive number of bylaws authorize the renaming, widening, and paving of Wellington Street. To set the scene, here's what it looked like to walk in the middle of Wellington Street in 1898:¹

3D Thursday: Super Men's barbershop

On March 12, 2014, I learned via Twitter that 504 Gladstone was on fire. I didn't get there until around 10pm, after it had been successfully defeated. The fire damage appeared relatively contained to the end unit, and the street had reopened to traffic. I took a 3D photo, which is actually a bit chilling because you can see right into the damaged unit through the window opening:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

I learned about the fire shortly after a neighbour across the street tweeted a couple photos around 6:30 p.m.:

Gladstone totally shut down pic.twitter.com/RgxeCq91Ok
— Upgrayedd (@DeportPanther) March 12, 2014

By the next day, the units on the west end of the row had been boarded up. The fire appeared to have been most severe in the commercial ground-floor unit at the west end, which contained an antique store, and previously a "Teleologist" (which a few years ago sparked a discussion, of which I can't find any record any more):

This wasn't the first close call for this building. In January 2007, a rather nasty (though, I understand, non-fatal) collision at this corner tore a traffic signal pole right off its footing and just missed smashing the windows of the art classes.

At the east end of the row are an art class place and the Super Men's Hair Stylist & Barber Shop. I started going there a few years ago after my previous barber on Bank Street kept jacking his prices up with decreasing customer service. These talented Iraqi men do it for much less, seven days a week (though the price has increased slightly since this photo was taken in November 2011):

Due to the smoke damage, the barbershop decided to move across the street, next to Fil's Furniture. It's a much larger space which will allow one of the barbers to move his art studio into the back:

His website is www.FirebySaba.com; an unfortunate name given the circumstances, but arising from his technique. His thickly-covered canvasses are a "controlled riot of colour" (according to the website description), and I'd say some of them are even astral. The first time I met Sabah, he had been in Canada for just two months and had never experienced a real winter. He's easily one of the most interesting and passionate people I've met.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

179 Waverley update (2012 fire)

Two years ago to the month, the house at 179 Waverley Street in the Golden Triangle suffered a two-alarm fire. The following week I posted a couple of photos I took when I arrived shortly after it was extinguished. Here's another from the same photoset, of a pumper truck being emptied of water after use:

The windows were quickly boarded up. It looks from the outside like most of the fire damage was restricted to the upper floors.

3D Thursday: St. Paul Church (Aylmer, QC)

St. Paul's church in Aylmer is obviously not in Centretown, but it's in the Ottawa area and its ruins will be demolished today. It was consumed by fire after it was struck by arsonist on the evening of June 11, 2009, and has been in ruin ever since. Click on this 3D photo to see it full screen for better effect:

A number of people posted videos of the fire to YouTube, including this shocking one of the high wooden steeple falling into a plume of fire.

A colleague of mine who lives within sight of the church sent me photos the following day, including this one:

When I was in the area a couple of months later, in August 2009, I snapped this photo, which shows signs of some tidying up of the stone walls:

St. Paul's church was a focal point of the town of Aylmer, which was home to many of my ancestors, for example: my grandmother was born in and grew up in a house practically across the street from the church, and her father was Mayor of Aylmer for a few years in the first half of the 20th century (as was his brother-in-law). Both married their respective spouses at St. Paul's.

Recent articles in the Ottawa Citizen and CBC summarize the bureaucratic gridlock that led to the decision to demolish the remains. That conclusion was partly due to the church not being insured sufficiently to allow a full reconstruction, partly due to the local governments' unwillingness to preserve the heritage, and largely due to lawyers' overabundance of caution.

In anticipation of the imminent demolition, I went by for the last time this past Christmas Day to take some 3D photos for posterity.

At least in Centretown, when the Somerset House partially collapsed, we held on to what is left until it can be restored. By contrast, once you tear the buliding down, it's gone forever. Then it, and the history it represents, is easily forgotten.

Which do you remember better: Ottawa's former City Hall at Elgin and Queen, or Lisgar Collegiate Institute?

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

Centretown time capsule: August/September 2007

Happy Labour Day everyone!

For today's post, I want to do something a little different. I wanted to give a snapshot of what was happening in Centretown five years ago in August and September 2007. With a high proportion of renters, many Centretown residents—even those active in community affairs—weren't here five years ago (nor was this blog!). For the rest of us, it'll be a trip down memory lane.

The 2007 Labour Day parade, organized by the Ottawa and District Labour Council, ended as usual at McNabb Park for the annual festival with free hotdogs, corn on the cob, and other attractions (if you're reading this post shortly after it goes up, head out there now! They should be there from the end of the parade until 4:30pm). You might recognize this photo of the wading pool as one of the four at the bottom of the CCCA's 'promo cards':

September 2007 marked the official opening of the Corktown Footbridge on the 11th (the bridge opened to traffic the previous September). Municipal politicians and interpreters in 1830's period dress were there to cut the ribbon.

384 MacLaren, before and after the June 2012 fire

One night back in early June (I'm catching up on my backlog!) there was a fire in a walkup apartment at the southwest corner of Bank and Maclaren. OpenFile ran some photos of the fire from Twitter user CasualMr who had a vantage point of the action from Bank Street. A couple of days later, signs of the fire were still there, and the building was cordoned off with a security guard keeping watch in the lobby:

There was a heroic story on CBC about a man who rescued his girlfriend and her pets from her fourth-floor apartment.

The ground floor of this building includes a few retail units, including the "Dirty Oak" and a Thai restaurant. Here's a photo of the building from a similar angle back in October 2009. Between the two photos, you can see that the fire did some damage to the cornice.

Fire at Arlington Bed & Breakfast

[Last Wednesday's lengthy pedestrian pushbutton post was followed by a Walk Ottawa meeting in the evening, where all two hours were spent grilling two of the City's traffic operations managers about pedestrian signals, and I think we could use a break. So no Peds on Weds post today.]

On Monday night, the power went out in much of the south-west section of Centretown (roughly 417 to Gladstone, Bank to Bronson), which was the first indication to many that something was amiss. To my recollection, this is only the second time this section of Centretown has lost power in the six years I've lived on Gladstone.

After hearing fire trucks go by and checking the Twitter feeds of Ottawa Fire Services Public Information Officer Marc Messier and Ottawa Citizen reporter Meghan Hurley, I quickly learned that there was a raging fire at 511 Kent Street, the Arlington Avenue "Bed & Breakfast":

A big crowd of neighbours were out watching the flames still shooting from the roof, likely motivated by the power outage and Summer-like weather at sunset. Police closed off Kent Street and Arlington Avenue in the two blocks in either direction on both streets. Here a firefighter is near the top of Ladder 13, which is extended between 511 Kent and the next house up.

179 Waverley fire

Last Monday as my lunch hour was running out, three fire trucks went past where I was eating on Elgin, and chatter on Twitter made it clear that there was a two-alarm fire on Waverley.

By the time I got down there, the fire was out and things were wrapping up.

Luckily there were no injuries in this two-alarm fire at 179 Waverley, though there is significant damage to the house. It would appear that the house next door, barely a foot away, was unscathed.

Power was still out on the block, and two Ottawa Hydro trucks at Cartier and Waverley were working on that.

It seems more common to hear firetrucks race by in the winter, but thankfully most of the incidents they're responding to aren't as severe as this one was. Be careful about how you keep your house warm, and make sure to check your fire alarm regularly!

Ladder 11

Ladder 11 is a fire truck from Fire Station #11 on Preston at Eccles (one block south of Somerset West). It's in Little Italy and just around the corner from Chinatown. They've therefore decorated the ladder with an Italian flag design with a Chinese dragon.

Here, Ladder 11 and a number of other fire trucks were responding to an alley fire at Lyon and Cooper on Canada Day 2011. I don't think there was significant damage or injury, as the fire didn't make it to any of the papers. I also tweeted a couple of photos at the time from my Twitter account, @Centretowner

Some, but not all, other stations decorate their ladders as well. A couple more were on hand for the opening of the Ottawa Firefighters Memorial back in 2009.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Tommy & Lefebvre reconstruction: Intro and Part 3

As you probably recall, Tommy & Lefebvre suffered a fire at their Bank & McLeod location on the night of March 30-31 last year. At the time (links in the list below), I blogged photos from the following day, and the demolition of the corner building.

They're now close to reopening, so it's a good time to post photos from the rest of the demolition and reconstruction. Check back every two days at noon for the next post in the series (which will also be linked here after posting):

• Part 1 - Tommy & Lefebvre fire: Posted April 1, 2009. Includes photos of the building before the fire and the day after the fire, plus a video someone took of the fire.


• Part 2 - Down Down Down: Posted April 6, 2009. The first section is about the first stage of the T&L demo, and shows the mural revealed.


• Part 3: (This post.) Demolition of the second building, and temporary location


• Part 4: Demolition of the third building


• Part 5: Preparing the site, and rendering of the new building


• Part 6: Double post - laying the foundations, basement walls, and ground floor


• Part 7: Building the frame of the building


• Part 8: Walls and ceilings going up


• Part 9: The big reveal!

Part 3: Demolition of second building

The former Tommy & Lefebvre flagship store was actually three different connected buildings. This made operations a bit difficult, because it also meant three different sets of washrooms, and three different basements with three different stairways. Moving merchandise around was frustrating.

The corner building, built in the 1970's, was demolished first.

Where we left off in the last post, the second building had just come down:

Here you can see the division between the basements of the corner building and the second one.

The rubble piled relatively high for a one-storey building.

Five days later, these machines had taken care of it all. In this shot, you can also see the middle and rear segments of the third building, both of which are cinder block. Thanks to the fire doors, the third building suffered mostly smoke and water damage, and structurally was not too damaged. The truck in the background is unloading stock and customers' bikes.

Here's that rear segment with the parking lot in the foreground, looking relatively undamaged.

Back at the front of the building, you can make out the painted ads revealed by the demolition of the second building, as described in Part 2. There was also a rooftop courtyard.

Here's a closer shot of the painted ad. Some of the bricks at the front of the building have fallen off already, but you can tell that this façade was not original, as it cuts into the red vertical ad.

In this shot from the corner, you can get a decent idea of how the whole site looked. Taken a month after the previous shot, in early May 2009, you can see that a few more bricks are gone from the front of the building, along with the fence-like structure at the top of the façade. The reconstruction of Bank Street was also underway, hence the additional pylons in the roadway.

Days after the fire, T&L had set up a temporary location at 680 Bank in the Glebe, which had been Olympic Sport Centre for many years before being renovated into a short-lived non-sports store called the Pannier.

T&L occupied the location until at least the end of June, when I took this photo, but by late September 2009, it had become the new downtown location of Kunstadt Sports.

Tune in on Tuesday at noon for Part 4, showing the demolition of the third building.

Beaver Barracks fire

Long before it was reported in the Citizen, I got a phone call on Wednesday night alerting me to a fire at the Beaver Barracks housing development under construction.

I was just getting off the canal around Fifth Avenue, and managed to take a photo of some white puffs of smoke coming from the site. Major fires usually have large columns of black smoke.

Here's last photo I had taken of this building on the development, from late November:


The roads were closed at Catherine and Metcalfe:

By the time I got to the site, the fire was already extinguished, and firefighters were in the lengthy process of making sure the fire hadn't spread anywhere else.

While we've had a lot of fires lately, it was pretty clear that this one didn't do a whole lot of damage to the building. The word I've heard is that the fire was mainly on one of the scaffolding platforms, so the flames would have looked more severe to onlookers than if the fire were within the building.

I have a number of photos on the ongoing construction of the Beaver Barracks site, but I haven't spent much attention posting them because the CCOC has a good site, including photos of the progress and renderings, at beaverbarracks.ca

Yet another fire in Centretown (Bronson and Gilmour)

This afternoon, there was a fire on Bronson which caused traffic to be redirected onto surrounding streets. (Traffic was pretty constant on Gladstone) I got a tip about the fire when I was on the other end of Centretown, and made my way over on my way home. By that time, Bronson was re-opened and there was only one fire truck and a fire investigator's minivan. Firefighters were tidying up the hoses that were going into the house.

The building housed the offices of family physician Dr. Tung Le, and the front door showed signs that the firefighters had to break into the house, suggesting that nobody was inside at the time. (The Ottawa Sun reports that nobody was injured.) Many of the windows were also knocked out from the inside. It looks like the fire was relatively contained and that the building will survive.

I'm heading out shortly, so I'll have to hurriedly post some photos of the scene without comment:

Fire at 83 Florence last night

Last night, on the way home, a dozen or so fire trucks were gathered on Florence between Lyon and Kent. According to one of the neighbours, they were responding to an electrical fire at 83 Florence (Google Street View link).

The neighbour told me that the firefighters had been there for an hour and a half. By the time I got there, they were packing up. Apparently they suspected asbestos in the building, so they were carefully removing their outer layer and placing their firefighting clothes in large yellow decontamination bags.

Nobody was injured, although one resident had just gone into the shower when the alarms rang. It does not appear that the damage was too severe, as it didn't appear to make it on any news sites, and was overshadowed by last night's other, more severe, fire in Vanier

Firefighters memorial

As mentioned in the post Firefighters Memorial Sneak Peek, there was a ceremony on the 11th to commemorate fallen soldiers in the Ottawa Fire Service, following a parade from the Museum of Nature. This year was special because the first phase of the local firefighters' memorial was unveiled (as opposed to the national firefighters memorial, to be built near the new condo on Lebreton Flats)

As I arrived, the parade was just finishing up, with historical fire vehicles and equipment coming up off Laurier Avenue onto Marion Dewar Plaza, many being pulled by volunteers:

These vehicles assembled in front of City Hall.

The ceremony was being held across the grass at the site of the new memorial. Behind the memorial, a gargantuan Canadian flag was suspended from ladders 13 and 24. Many firefighters in dress uniform were arranged to watch the ceremony:

There were many civilians, including passersby and family and friends of lost firefighters.

Most of those, I suspect, were in the seating area in front of the three long rows of firefighters.

Politicians and other officials were kept contained in a stage area. The woman on the grass with the salmon coloured shirt is Louise Carota, who designed the monument.

While those officials were on a stage, the attention was focused on the monument, from which most of the speeches were delivered. Here the contributors and contractors are being recognized. Signs were posted on the monument recognizing the contributors; unfortunately, these have since been removed.

On the other end of the memorial the band played. You can also see many fire trucks parked on Laurier bridge.

Pumper P11B was covered in black ribbons and the lights were covered in black cloth. Members of station No. 11 presented the plaque with the names of firefighters who lost their lives in the line of duty.

This, of course, is just a slice of the memorial. I was pleased that the ceremonies tended to focus on the loss of local firefighters, and on the work involved to get the memorial built. It was very formal and ceremonial.

You couldn't see them from in front of the memorial, but these eight firefighters were standing at attention beneath the massive flag. While some of my friends have said they thought the flag was a bit much, I'm impressed merely from a technical standpoint: not only is it big, but it was windy. It was tough getting photos of the flag hanging straight down.

For links to relevant sources, including the fund for the next phase of the memorial, please see the previous post on the firefighters memorial.