Scratch that

A week or so ago, I was heading down Bank Street in the Glebe, taking some photos of the construction, when out of the corner of my eye I saw this kid tap the recently-poured curb with his skateboard. I figured he was trying to tell if it was hard enough for him to step on it to get to his friends. Then he picked up a piece of gravel, which I figured he was going to toss, as boys do.

Instead, he bent down and started scratching something into the not-yet-hardened curb. Since I was taking photos anyway, I conspicuously aimed my camera at him and took his photo (as you can tell, I've blurred his face). That got him to stop, and hopefully he's learned his lesson and won't do it again.

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

Pimp that bus

If you happened to be riding or walking over the Dunbar Bridge along Bronson over the Ottawa River on Saturday, September 11, 2010, you might have been a bit surprised to see a school bus on the soccer pitch.

If you went down through Brewer Park, you would have seen the signs advertising House of PainT, an annual graffiti and hip-hop festival held at Ottawa's first legal graffiti wall.

The bus was there to be painted. It's owned by Centretown residents Caleb Dykstra and Hana Haines, who plan to convert the bus tinto an R.V./buffet and drive down to Nicaragua filled with sports equipment and school supplies.

More on their trip are covered in this News EMC article and this Ottawa Citizen article.

The Highway Traffic Act (and similar laws between Ontario and Nicaragua) restrict the distinctive yellow paint scheme to vehicles being operated as school bus, so this machine needed to be painted.

It created a natural synergy with House of Paint. By the end of the day, much of one side and the front were painted...

...but much of the bus was still yellow. Note the camouflage on the mirror. Nice effect!

The bus was moved under the bridge and painted on subsequent days. Some photos are on the HOP 2010 photo album.

Moving on under the bridge, this was my first time at House of Paint.

Since there wasn't too much to see while the painting was going on, a DJ and breakdancing floor provided some entertainment. Like the occasional breakdancing mayoral candidate.

It is nevertheless interesting to see the techniques and watch the work in progress.

Especially in comparison to the finished product.

This work was here from before, on the underside of the bridge, depicting a giant mushroom breaking through the roadway to the night sky above. I like it.

With the large, concrete bridge deck above, the painted walls, and the crowd gathered around a central platform, there was a feeling of an urban cathedral.

Later on in the evening, after the painting stopped, the music and dancing went on.

People admired the finished works.

There's some really good work on there!

Bay and Nepean Demo, Part 3: 259 Bay Street

[It seems there is a problem with the images. Update: the problem is on Google's end.]

Last time, I posted the second in a series of posts on the demolition of houses at Bay and Nepean. In that post, I looked at 255 Bay Street, on the left in the photo below taken in late November 2007.

Today, we'll look at 259 Bay Street. It is not a particularly spectacular house, and as a result this is the shortest post in the series.

As we can see in the photo below, it's a fairly ordinary house, but it does have quite a bit of character underneath the paint and graffiti. The sidewalk has been poured all the way to the foundation, but the window dressings, including shutters and eyelash-like brickwork, give it its charm.

Certainly more charming than a pile of rubble.

In the laneway, big rocks discourage motorists from using the laneway. Here in late May 2009, we see anti-Olympics graffiti on the side wall, reading "Rise Up / Resist / Riot 2010"

Removal of the rubble revealed graffiti in the basement, too.

At the rear, we see that the backyward had also been paved over, probably to save on landscaping costs. In May 2009, after a few years of human absence, we see nature beginning to reclaim its ground.

An architectural curiosity is the small window at the back of the house that was partially obstructed by the roofline of the rear addition. More photos of the rear of the building are in the previous post.

Here we see the rear foundation wall of the original building, with some holes in the middle for what I assume is a woodstove and flue.

Lastly, a foreshadowing of the next post. In the background of this late-November 2007 shot looking through the laneway between 255 and 259 Bay we see not only the tower crane for Hudson Park phase I (which was just reaching ground level at the time), but also the rears of the next two buildings in the series.

Tune in in four more days--Friday Noon, for Part 4: 357-359 Nepean Street.

293 Lyon Street Demo

In late May, the demolition of a rear shed at 293 Lyon Street revealed the neighbouring lot's peculiar shed featured in this URBSite post. 293 Lyon is the red-brick building behind the blue and white one at the corner of Lyon and Cooper:

Since then, this Sun story from June revealed that Carmen Argentina had bought 293 Lyon Street in April and plans to replace the oft-vandalized building with a multi-unit complex on the 31-by-99-foot lot. Photo #12 on this Ottawa Sun collection shows an additional interior view with the graffiti.

Because the house is in a zone with heritage designation (it's right at the border of the zone, according to eMAP), there must be a proposal to rebuild within five years before a demolition permit is issued. One assumes plans are ready, because a demolition permit was issued and will be carried out tomorrow.

This post contains a twice the usual number of photos because it combines shots from May and from earlier this week.

Here's the front of the house. In late May, previous graffiti had been recently cleared and the front door and window were boarded off. The window above the porch dormer was open. Since then, more graffiti was added. The plywood boarding up the front door has been removed, and yet another coat of graffiti is visible on the brickwork, as well as the front sidewalk and second-storey windows. A thin line across the middle of the facade suggests there was a full-length porch at some point many years in the past:

The front of the house has a bit of character to it. The roofline looks as though it were sliced off in a haphazard renovation some decades ago. (August photo)

Along the South side of the house, incomplete eavestroughing along the steep roof has led to damage to the brickwork. There's one window on the ground floor toward the rear of the building. (May photo)

The front porch is quite crooked, though the humble little porch light remains intact. (May photo)

On the North side of the house, along the laneway, there are two windows on each level. In May (first photo), the utilities were still connected, and the wall was relatively clean. You can see the yellow rear addition, and the gravel pad (at far right) where the previous shed had been. The shed featured in the URBSite post is visible on the other side of the fence. By this week (second photo), there is much more graffiti, and three sets of services are disconnected. The mesh cover over the basement window at the front of the house is also gone.

The two windows sticking out from the roof are undamaged by vandalism, though they've taken a beating from the elements.

At the rear of the house was an interesting extension. While the exterior wall is continuous, it's clear (especially post-demolition) that only half of it was built on a foundation. The demolition appears to have been done carefully, as some re-usable lumber is stacked up at the rear of the lot. While it was still standing, some Arabic girls drew flowers on the wall, and a dashed line with scissors around the rearmost doorway:


The rear of the roof back in May had a rope ladder slung over the chimney, probably by people breaking in through the (recent looking) rear window, whose screen is sliced and hanging down.

By August, the window has been removed (probably salvaged for future use), and surprisingly, the rope ladder has not.

Here's a view of the whole building from May, showing the relative proportions of the house and rear shed. The back wall has a cute little square window with a couple of panes broken.

Looking through the hole in the window, one could see the wooden dividing wall between the two sections of the rear part of the building (the sections with and without a foundation). The rearmost section was entirely uninsulated, full of litter and covered in graffiti. On the door dividing the section is written "Mort aux capitali$tes" ("death to capitalists")

In the corner between the back of the main part of the building and the rear extension were some bricks and a little shovel with a broken handle:

I was surprised to see the shovel still there after the rear part was removed. It was joined by a kitchen sink. I guess you can find anything at a demo site.

Here's the back of the building with its rear removed. You can see the foundation that was under part of the rear extension, and its interface with the main part of the building.

Looking closer at the side edge, you can get an idea of how the building was assembled, with a layer of brick exterior over a wood-board frame. At some point, a large opening was closed off and reduced to a single doorframe. The big gap in the crawlspace beneath probably made the whole house difficult to heat. And a couple of wires are still sticking out into the pit.

But they don't go anywhere. It's the end of the line for these wires--and for this house.

A couple of people I know who had looked at buying the house when it was on the market knew that it was a "fixer-upper" at least, and more likely a "tearer-downer." One person said it was only on the market for two days until it was picked up.

Let's hope the triplex that replaces it will fit in nicely with the heritage character of the neighbourhood.

Yellow House redevelopment

The infamous Yellow House, which I discussed previously in the post Images of Gladstone, is coming closer and closer to redevelopment.

As a recap, 740 and 742 Gladstone, had housed the Pawn-Da-Rosa pawn shop and apartments above. Despite being schedule to be demolished "next month," in July 2008, the City wanted the owner to paint over the graffiti that was on the building. So Gary Stunden*, agent for the building's owner, Ali Shafiei, decided to paint it yellow, partly as a gimmick, and partly to tease the City for doing something as silly as ordering him to clean it up with only a month left until it was demolished. The above photo was taken on July 11, 2008, shortly after the sardonic paint job.

[Edit: CBC News reports that Gary Stunden is an architect whose license was revoked in 2004 by the Ontario Association of Architects.]

The plan is to demolish the building, along with its neighbour, 746 Gladstone, to be replaced with a seven-unit townhouse development to fill the large corner lot. Here's a shot of 746 Gladstone from last September. The porch was removed, and the doors and windows were boarded up and/or painted black. The top window in the attic appears to have been gone.

By yesterday, June 25, 2009, both buildings were still there.

The yellow house has received a lot of graffiti (and painting over thereof) and the yellow paint has chipped off the large windows at the front. The other house is largely unscathed; a window appears to have been installed in the gap at the top, and a piece of plywood now covers the front window, but it seems that the subtle disguise of the blacking over, coupled with the bright graffiti magnet next door, has spared it from vandalism.

Even the rear of the house, though the windows are boarded up, appears unscathed, with the upper-level windows unbroken. Tall thistle weeds in the garden help.

On the wall between the two houses, many have used the yellow walls as a canvas. Aside from the short film This House Will Not Be Here Tomorrow by Ralitsa Doncheva, which uses the house as a backdrop, some more simple poetry has been affixed to the wall, such as this slogan "My opprotunity, My window..." (sic)

Looking back toward the street at the side of the house, we can see the very peak of the rear wall escaped the painting, a subtle reminder of the white Pawn-Da-Rosa house that was there for many years. Debris is scattered in the yard, and a hole has been formed in the brickwork at the rear corner:

Behind the house is a concrete pad, which the 2007 aerial photos suggest used to be a garage fronting on Cambridge. Now it serves as a pathway for teenagers to cut behind the house, picking up rocks from the fallen brickwork:

The Cambridge Street side of the house has weathered--it's had a lot of character added to it in the last eleven months. You can see spots where graffiti tags cover yellow splotches that painted over previous graffiti.

But also a sign of hope: the black and white sign suggests that development may finally come to the site.

At the June meeting of the Dalhousie Community Association, plans were circulated for the site. For reference, here is a screenshot from the City of Ottawa's eMap application with 2007 aerial photos. We can see that both houses are on a single lot, marked 740 Gladstone. We can also see the former garage. The zoning is Traditional Mainstreet with a height limit of 18.5 metres.

The site plan is to demolish the two houses and replace them with a townhouse-style development, with seven 12-foot-wide townhouses facing on Cambridge Street. The one closest to Gladstone will be a trapezoid-shaped unit (16'-3" at Cambridge, 10'-0" at the rear) following Gladstone's bend, addressed 744 Gladstone (interesting choice, since the two existing buildings are 740, 742, and 746), and will have ground-floor retail.

It looks like all the units will have parking in the rear, accessed from Gladstone, and will be built above the parking. The fronts, on Cambridge, will have little gated garden spaces, encroaching slightly onto the sidewalk right-of-way, but greatly adding to the character.

According to the City planner in charge of this application, the application is on hold pending completion of a Phase II Environmental Site Assessment.

In the meantime, enjoy the Yellow House! (Photo taken May 12, 2009)