Peds on Weds: Part 4: A history of sidewalk design in Ottawa

Today for the fourth and final entry of the sidewalk-design series, I'm going to give a history of sidewalk design, starting at the establishment of the original City of Ottawa, in 1855 (and earlier!). In part 2 of this series, I already gave a "little history" of the Toronto-style sidewalk design, relating specifically to how they became standard back to the establishment of the current amalgamated City of Ottawa in 2001. This followed part 1, in which I described "Toronto-style" sidewalks and the problems they're meant to address, and part 3, in which I discussed some of the issues the Toronto-style sidewalk itself has faced.

Today's entry starts with the West Ward Market, built in 1848 by Nicholas Sparks. This was used as Ottawa's first City Hall, roughly where the NAC is today.

r

The first municipally-built sidewalks in Ottawa actually predate the City of Ottawa's 1855 incorporation: by-law number 37 of the Town of Bytown, approved the 23rd of September, 1850, was "To authorize the expenditure of £75 in making a Plank Sidewalk, S. side York Street":

3D Thursday: Snowy trees at Cambridge Elementary

Ottawa got hit by a pretty nasty snowstorm yesterday, but the blizzard did leave a winter wonderland behind. I took some 3D photos after a similar snowfall earlier this winter while snow was still covering the trees lining the schoolyard at Cambridge Street Public School on Gladstone. Here's looking up Cambridge from Gladstone Avenue, with a fire hydrant:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left , Right

And here's a shot looking west along Gladstone. Because the 3D effect works by your brain trying to match up the left and right images, it can be hard to discern the cluttered high-contrast branches. I find this one works best if you focus on the school crossing sign, and as always with the 3D images, it works best in fullscreen, high screen brightness, in a dark room.

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

That crossing, by the way, is the subject of some good news: Lana Stewart reported on Twitter that the pedestrian push-button at Gladstone and Arthur now responds much more clearly.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images] [Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

3D Thursday: OBE building, 330 Gilmour

For the second 3D Thursday post, I should return to Centretown.

The old Ottawa Board of Education building at 330 Gilmour is a nice building, but I haven't posted any of my own photos of it, since the URBSite post on the building and its two blue spruce trees is very extensive.

Now, however, I can add my 3D photo of the building. If you download the full-size image (right click and select "Save Target As...") and zoom in, you can even see the branches of the two main spruce trees popping out from each other.

As always with my 3D photos posts, I'm inlcluding the link to the source images from which I made the composite red-blue 3D image. If you think you can do a better job, have at it!

Left image

Right image

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

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

Summer: time for fun

The playing field next to the former Ottawa Tech High School, at Albert Street and Bronson Avenue is perhaps best known for the legal graffiti wall opposite Albert Street. But it's also a place where dogs play, where people walk through to get to and from work, and, as in this instance, where people set up a badminton net and play:

The graffiti wall is underneath the ledge from which this photo was taken, on the far side of the "OMB" tag.

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

Ottawa Earthquake anniversary. Where was I?

Special Thursday post: Today is the one-year anniversary of the magnitude 5 earthquake that rocked the Ottawa area on June 23, 2010. This morning I woke to many messages about where people were during an earthquake in my Twitter feed, and since Twitter reads reverse-chronologically, I'd thought I'd slept through an earthquake this morning until I saw the original question from the Ottawa Citizen's twitter account asking people where they were last year.

I was on a private tour of the former OBE Media Centre on Bronson just south of the 417(the "Bronson Shops"). During the earthquake, we were on the lower roof. Since the building is right next to the queensway, a couple of us thought there were just some big trucks driving by. Centretown's northern skyline (beyond the lowrise zones) is visible beyond the Queensway.

But Jack Corry, the OCDSB's area supervisor was with us on the tour and told us that it was in fact an earthquake. We got to hear the live updates from schools across the city over his radio, including schools closing in the western suburbs and pleas from the head office for schools to stop asking for how to proceed while they figure out a plan.

I'd organized the tour (which consisted of Jennifer McKenzie, OCDSB trustee for Somerset and Kitchissippi and now Chair of the school board, Jack, my friend Richard Guy Briggs and me) because of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation's plans to buy it and demolish it to straighten the 417 Bronson offramp (currently cars continuing straight must jog south at Bronson and wait to turn left, which backs up traffic all the way to Gladstone). When I was attending McNabb public school, every day I'd see the building as the school bus came off that ramp and turned north on Bronson, so I was always curious what was inside.

I took hundreds of photos of the inside and plan to post them in a series sometime, but I wanted to get something up for the quake anniversary. Richard posted some photos on his site, and URBSite has a post on the history of the building.

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

Gladstone Sports and Health Centre part 2: major renos

In the previous post, I talked about the history of 18 Louisa, formerly St. Agnes Roman Catholic Seperate School.

The school, after a brief stint as the Ottawa Polonia Centre, was bought by some Table Tennis groups that have converted it into the Gladstone Sport and Health Centre. They've hired PCL Construction to completely renovate the building, inside and out, and are renting the third-floor offices to other non-profit groups like the one for which I work.

Today's post compares photos of the exterior of the building before, during, and after the renovations. Because it's a before-and-after post, it contains many more photos than my usual posts.


As I only discovered the building part-way through renovations, I've had to rely on other sources for photos predating the work, such as Bing maps' aerial view, above.

Google Street View, whose Ottawa photos are from Spring of 2009, offers a "historical" look of the building before renovations. If you click on any of the Google Street View images in this post, it will take you to that perspective in Google Street View (clicking on other photos will enlarge the photo). There are also photos in an album on the Ottawa Polonia website dating from when the site was a Polish community centre.


The former Catholic school's North wall had a glass brick window/wall on the stairway, an entrance with a canopy, orange flashing, and a brick cross embedded into the wall:

Gladstone Sports and Health Centre part 1: History of 18 Louisa

Tune in Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week for a series of posts on the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre.

If you don't have to go South of Gladstone between Bronson and Rochester, you might not know that there's a school there.

I was surprised to first find it in early April of this year, by which time it had ceased to be a school, and was undergoing renovations. I took some photos, not realizing the connection I would later have with the building.

For reference, the former St. Agnes Roman Catholic school is located at 18 Louisa Street, in the block bordered by Louisa, Bell, Arlington and Lebreton. Here's a shot of the school from Microsoft Live Maps' bird's-eye view, taken before the renovations (click the photo to go to MS Live Maps--bird's eye view not available in all browsers). At the top-left of the image, you can see the Southernmost corner of the Bell Street apartments—also known as Fairview Towers and Peyton Place—which will soon be undergoing major renovations to the exterior.

In the aerial view above, you can clearly see the original section of the school (lower-right of the image), and the two additions, classrooms with larger windows to the North (lower-left in the image), and an elevated Gymnasium to the East (upper-right in the image).

The building is now significant to me because my office has relocated to the building—in fact, I'm typing this entry from my office inside the building! (As a corollary, my blog entries will include more Dalhousie content, in addition to the regular Centretown content.)

In this series:

• This post: History of 18 Louisa Street (below)
• Wednesday: Exterior transformation
• Friday: Dalhousie Food Cupboard and interior tour

(2012 note: the GSHC now has a new website)

History of 18 Louisa Street

There are scant references to 18 Louisa Street and St. Agnes School on the web, which is the extent of my research.

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic District School Board has a comprehensive history of the School Board from 1856-1997 on their website, available in flash or PDF version.

In the School Board's History document, "St. Agnes School on Louisa Street existed as early as 1890-91 as indicated by the Ottawa city directory of that time." (p. 150)

However, this crop of a 1923 map of Ottawa shows distinctive residential-sized plots on the block, suggesting the school was either very small, or located elsewhere. (The current building wasn't built until the '50s, with an extension and gymnasium added in the '60s.) The History goes on to mention that St. Agnes worked in tandem with St. Anthony's school, built in 1925 (known as Dante Academy at the time).

Digging back a bit further to the 1894 map of Ottawa posted in this URBSite post, Louisa street had the same name at the time, but Bell Street was Lisgar Street (yes, there were two Lisgar streets within blocks of each other--one in Wellington ward and one in Dalhousie ward), Arlington was Munroe Street (with no connection to East-of-Bronson Arlington, then called Archibald), and Lebreton Street still had its generic name of Division Street.

There is little else written about St. Agnes from that point until the school reopened as a school for immigrant adults. Following amalgamation of the school board in 1998, these programs were moved form St. Andrew's adult school in the West end, with St. Agnes opening in Fall 2000. After decline in enrolment, the school closed in June 2005, and the site was sold in 2006. (pp. 46-47)

The building was purchased by the Polish community and was affiliated with St. Hyacinth Parish on the same block, operating as Ottawa Polonia Centre.

Incidentally, the Ottawa Polonia Centre has an album of images of 18 Louisa pre-construction on their website (the first few are all of the North entrance):

Back in March, Eric Darwin mistakenly attributes the renovations to the Polish community centre.

In fact, the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre was incorporated in August 2008, and by January 2009, Table Tennis Canada had already had plans underway to convert the building to their national training centre, as announced in their January 2009 newsletter (PDF):

"The National High Performance Training Centre has a new address in Ottawa. After many years of looking for a new permanent site, Table Tennis Canada, in cooperation with [the International Table Tennis Federation] and [TMS International] are now leasing a 24 hours/day, 7 days/week training facility. The gym is equipped with brand new tables, special flooring for table tennis courts and a state of the art lighting system."

The completion of renovations would later be postponed to May 2010 (PDF), and eventually to August 2010. The exterior renovations will be the subject of the next post, available this Wednesday at noon.

Throughout this time, the Dalhousie Food Cupboard has operated (and continues to operate) out of this building, serving the Dalhousie neighbourhood. I'll be profiling the Dalhousie Food Cupboard in Friday's post, along with a tour of the interior. Stay tuned...

Rideau Canal: The Limit

Since I've been averaging about two hours a day on the canal since it opened on January first, I haven't had much time to post. And frankly, I'd much rather be skating on the canal than blogging about it! But while I've been skating, I've taken lots of photos! (In fact, I have few photos of anything else!)

So, as long as the canal is open this year, Images of Centretown will effectively be Images of the Rideau Canal. Going through hundreds of canal photos so far this year, I've decided to go by theme.

And I can't resist starting with my sky shots. This canal is really photogenic, you know. Especially at dusk.

Here's a shot from the pathway coming down towards Fifth avenue, with the sun behind and lots of skaters having fun on the fourth:

A few days later, looking in roughly the opposite direction, a nice blue sky with fluffy clouds came out:

The moon came out to enjoy the canal as well. Here it is over Pig Island:

I was surprised that the moon followed me down to Immaculata High School the same night:

A few days later, it was really cold, but the rest of the canal had opened up. It was still pretty bumpy at Dow's Lake, especially along the south edge. Here it is, with the sun reflecting off the ice:

As dusk fell, the sky seemed to burn:

Night fell, and the moon hid behind some thin, stringy clouds around Clegg:

The following week, there was more cloud than open sky, but the moon managed to peek through again heading toward Hartwell's Lock:

And another week later (January 25), the sun burned white through the clouds over Centretown.

Extraneous shot for Woodsy: I've seen a few Pook Toques on the ice, including this one I photographed for you at Pretoria Bridge on January 8:

Other Canal themes I hope to post include night shots, snow, and bridges (Boy do the bridges over the canal take great photos!) We'll see if I can find time to post them!

Old Ottawa Tech gets a facelift

My grandfather was a student at the former Ottawa Technical High School, after which he headed to the U of O to study Engineering. The school, located between Albert and Slater at Bay Street, has long since ceased to be used as a such, though its facilities are still maintained for various different activities. Its yard, between Albert and Laurier, is well-known for sporting elaborate graffiti murals on the South wall, which can be a break for transit users' eyes as they come off the subterreanean Transitway.

Last September, the upper-level windows on the South wall of the building got a fancy new glass facade. Here's a shot of that under construction.


I noticed last week that some barricades have been arranged along the East wall, perhaps a hint that they will be doing that one next. You can see the completed South wall in this photo.



I expect transit users must enjoy the sleek new glass facade in place of the old, ugly brown that used to mark the entrance into downtown.

An interesting tidbit: The sidewalk along this stretch of Bay is designated as a shared sidewalk for cyclists to ride down, as indicated by this sign which reads, "Shared sidewalk / cyclists yield to pedestrians". As a law-abiding cyclist, I never noticed the sign until someone pointed it out to me, because I never had occasion to be looking in that direction on Bay street!



You can tell by the clutter on the asphalt portion of the sidewalk that nobody takes it very seriously. From what I understand, cyclists ride down it, then continue South on Bay street after the "shared sidewalk" ends. Not the best cycling facility.