Essence of a bagel

This past May, I was sitting on the ledge at Kettleman's Bagel Co. in the Glebe, waiting in line to order. From where I was sitting, you could see right to the back of the oven, and watch the fire burning inside.

If you ask me, this is the essence of the bagel.

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

150 Slater progress: Piles of fun III

In the previous post on 150 Slater's progress, I documented the construction of retaining walls around the former Rideau Winter Club building.

I also briefly mentioned a negative space becoming a positive one. Such a transition is even more pronounced on another part of the 150 Slater site, which will be the topic of today's post.

The Premier building, whose history and final days I documented in Down, Down, Down, Update 1, was separated from the building at 235 Laurier by a small alley. Looking at the building, you barely noticed it. Being a negative space, it was defined by the absence of anything between two very definable structures.

Let's get our bearings for a moment. In the image below, we see O'Connor Street in the foreground, with 235 Laurier squarely framed. You can see how some of the original siding was not replaced when the blue and glass cladding was added earlier this decade. In the foreground are some patches in the asphalt where holes had been dug to cut off services to the now-demolished buildings on the 150 Slater site.

Here's a closeup of the former siding. It's made from that ugly reinforced institutional glass with a grid of metal wires inside. The glass is filthy with years of dirt and grime. If this part of the wall is too far out of sight to re-clad, evidently it isn't worth cleaning, either. But having them here gives insight on how the new cladding relates to the old exterior: The new cladding essentially enshrouds these concrete fins, as it comes out further and has a lip below them. though I'm sure there was much work behind the glass as well.

At the back of the building, right below the old wall, are a pair of emergency exits, a gas connection and some ventilation panels. Since the building is still in use, the emergency exits must remain usable during the construction at 150 Slater. So a little structure was built to protect the accessway during the demolition of the Premier.

When the Premier's remains were extracted in mid-May and its site became an empty hole, the former alley became an enclosed passageway. In effect, negative and positive switched places.

By mid-June, the Premier's foundation walls had been demolished and the hole was filled in. Evidently, the demolition was very thorough, as a makeshift wooden walkway needed to be built to preserve access from the fire exit.

Under the boardwalk is revealed a gaping hole leftover from the foundation wall's demolition.

And in early July, piles had been driven and a retaining wall was built (as documented in the previous two posts on 150 Slater).

The gap under the walkway is still there, but the walkway is better supported now on the piles. You can also see a yellow hose--the gas line that comes from under the street to the back of the building. A worker is measuring the distance for the final segment of four-by-eights.

The machine used to install the tiebacks set me on a bent to learn more about construction of retaining walls. It's a very curious looking machine, which looks to me like the Predator alien from various films I haven't seen. It's rather photogenic, too, since its 'head' is suspended in the air at an angle.

Zooming in on the photo, I see the brand name Interoc, which suggests it may be an Interoc AN 140 Multi-purpose hydraulic drill rig. I believe this is the manufacturer's writeup. It's used to intall tiebacks, which is one fo the three primary ways of supporting retaining walls in construction sites, as illustrated in this diagram.

This particular rig, which is identified as unit number 05-28 in large black lettering on the back, is now being used at the construction site for 120 University, just over the Rideau Canal. A photo I have of the rig there has www.mse.ca clearly written in the back, identifying the owner as Forages M.S.E. Drilling, Inc. of Ste-Martine, Quebec.

The previously-linked California PDF manual on foundations (28MB) has a good writeup on tiebacks beginning on page 11-1 (page 193 of the PDF), and a useful cross-section diagram on the following page.

In short, a cavity is drilled at the end of an angled hole behind the wall, and a steel wire is anchored into the cavity with concrete (the weight and firmness of the soil keeps it in place). A stretch of wire between the anchor and the wall, surrounded loosely by a shroud, can be tensioned to put pressure on the wall, holding it in place. Once tightened, a cap is placed on the wire to hold its position, and your wall is retained.

And that's it for the progress updates on 150 Slater. Let me show you the exit:

For all photos of 150 Slater's development, see previous posts marked with the "150 Slater" label.

TD Bank throwback

Back in June, MM and I were standing on Elgin Street at Somerset, remarking at the 100-year-old sidewalk.

We were looking across the street at the current TD Canada Trust bank branch and noticing that it, too, has signs of where its exterior deposit slot had been replaced and painted over on the South end of the Elgin street wall.

I stood there contemplating how best to capture this in an image, when serendipity strikes and I get one chance to capture it as this old convertible drives through the frame:

Mission accomplished!

[I'll be posting more of these one-photo posts. Look for them under the label Singles]

150 Slater progress: Piles of fun II

It was sheer coincidence that I got this photo at the time I did. The angle of the crane's arm perfectly matches the angle of the shadow on the side wall of 235 Laurier at O'Connor. I had been tipped off that mid-June morning that they were removing the floor of the Rideau Winter Club.

The crane was supporting a green rig, which is a vibratory driver/extractor, according to this California PDF manual on foundations (28MB), specifically pages 7-21 to 7-23.

After piles were installed and the dirt removed from between the piles and the neighbouring building's garage structure, excavation could begin on the site. In this shot, taken the same day as the tip I mentioned in the first photo, they're about halfway through extracting the soil under the former Rideau Winter Club. You can see the former cooling tubes that are still present, nearly a century after first installed, and decades after they were last used.

In this photo sent to me earlier the same morning, you can get a better idea of the layering. Above the pipes was concrete, wood, reinforced concrete and/or fill, then the asphalt of the parking surface we'd known for many years. Beneath the pipes is soil infill, likely added when the rear of the building was decommissioned. Also note the hefty foundation walls on the far side.

Here's another one of those giant concrete foundation blocks, reminiscent almost of Stonehenge. It's hard to get scale, but judging by those stacks of what I suspect are four-by-eights, it's at least a couple feet thick.

By the end of June, digging out was mostly finished. these large white blocks have been installed along the top edge of the neigbouring building's underground garage, behind the piles for 150 Slater's retaining wall.

In early July, they were removing the soil from the lower level. Presumably they had run out of room to dig away from above. Behind this digger, you can see the retaining wall had been built up more. There's also a hole in the neighbouring parking garage. Maybe that was an "oops".

Here's a similar shot showing just the wall. I really like the layers in this shot. The white blocks are acting as the footing for a wooden barrier wall. Little triangles have been installed on the piles for the installation of tiebacks (incidentally, that's the page where I found the link to the Foundation manual. A good illustration of tiebacks is on page 194 of the PDF). I guess the neighbouring garage only goes down a storey or two, otherwise there wouldn't be any space for the tiebacks.

As I was going through my old photos, I found this one I took during this year's St. Patrick's Day parade. I had never before noticed that space between the two buildings, looking all the way to the World Exchange Centre, with its rooftop ball clock. Instinctively I took this photo. At the time, I had been oblivious that the Laurier Computer building (partial view on the left) was to be demolished. I guess my instincts were correct.

Lastly, here's a more square shot of the area from July 23rd. They've added a black tarp over the white blocks. They've also filled in behind the retaining wall (whose tiebacks have now been installed), and it has become a little catwalk, the negative space becoming a positive one. The spray-painted "EXIT" sign and the ladder gives it a Donkey Kong feel.



For all photos of 150 Slater's development, see previous posts marked with the "150 Slater" label.

150 Slater progress: Piles of fun I

It's time for some updates on the construction at 150 Slater. In previous posts with the 150 Slater label, I documented the demolition of the buildings which used to occupy what is now the 150 Slater site. In the current trio of posts, I'm documenting the installation of the retaining walls, and the removal of the fill.

For reference, here's the site, taken kitty-corner from the intersection of Slater Street and O'Connor Street in Ottawa's Cetnral Business District:

Back in May, before the wooden barriers had been set up, they started driving piles for the retaining walls. Wikipedia has a good graphic here depicting different types of retaining walls.

In the North-East part of the site (the leftmost corner in the above photo, in front of the building), they drew circles with spray-paint using an upended garbage bin for the circle, and a string for a guide:

Into these circles were pounded giant steel cylinders.

Here are some of those cylinders outside the ground, with the machine used to install them behind. The cyclinders are making googly eyes at us:

They installed them outside the former foundations of the Rideau Winter Club (more recently known as Laurier Computer), which I documented in detail in this post. You can still see the little stairs leading up the side. After driving down the cylinders, fill was added, presumably to add support.

Here's another view of that machine. The working end is covered in a tarp:

There are also I-beams on site waiting to be installed. In the foreground of this shot is an old I-beam from the former Rideau Winter Club, which had been levelled a few decades ago. The I-beams in the former building's east wall were left a few feet high to act as fenceposts.

Into the cylinders, I-beam piles were driven into the ground, and the cylinders were removed. Tieback anchors are drilled into the ground behind. (I cover both of these steps as they are performed on different parts of the site in the next two posts, respectively). Besserer Street residents know very well the importance of a well-built retaining wall. Now that the wall is built, work can begin on extracting the soil contained in the newly-formed box.

As fill removal progresses andthe hole becomes deeper, ramps must be fashioned out of the remaining fill, before it, too, is removed:

Once the topsoil is all gone and they hit rock bottom, it's time to blow this joint. As this sign warns: "CAUTION: CONTROLLED BLASTING AHEAD"

Once rock becomes rubble (with the help of explosives), it can be removed, too. In the photo below, we can see how deep the rock is, and how far below they've gone. We can also see the piles continuing below the rock surface. Since they're building a three-storey underground parking garage with 210 spaces, they'll need to blast down by a storey or so.

Stay tuned for the next two posts, including photos of the excavation of the Rideau Winter Club's former foundation.

Tale of the Elgin Street Century, Part II

In part I, I discussed the replacement of a couple of squares of sidewalk on Elgin Street, dating back to 1905. I find that there's quite an underlying lesson here.

When we think of heritage, we tend to focus on the buildings, and not so much the built infrastructure between them. Yet for all the change that Elgin Street has seen since 1905, including the construction of buildings along the same block, pieces of it still survive to this day. Only the bits that have needed replacing have been replaced, and remarkably, some of them simply haven't needed to be.

Nowadays, if someone proposed to demolish an entire neighbourhood and replace it with brand-new buildings, they'd be chased out of the room. It was done in the mid 1960s in Lebreton Flats, and the 1965 [Correction:] DeLeuw Cather Ottawa-Hull Transportation Study proposed much the same for Centretown in order to accommodate suburban commuter traffic. As the below diagram indicates, King Edward Avenue was to be turned into a Queensway-like expressway, Somerset and MacLaren were to be twinned (as Albert and Slater were), with a bridge over the Rideau Canal. As for the houses, they'd be demolished and replaced with towers. Kent and Lyon had already been widened, as documented in this Urbsite post.

Even more shocking were the plans for Laurier and Gloucester, as depicted in the diagram below. Aside from Lebreton Flats being turned into a mess of cloverleafs feeding expressways on Booth and Preston, the blocks between Laurier and Gloucester were to be levelled and replaced with a 17-lane expressway, called the "Downtown Distributor".

Tale of the Elgin Street Century, Part I

I'm starting to catch up with my regular routine, and after sorting out my photos I can begin blogging again. Here's one that I've been meaning to compose for a while now.

Returning to the office after lunch on an afternoon late this past April, my attention was drawn to this crack in the sidewalk on Elgin, just North of Somerset. I think my foot jostled on it as I walked over it. I stopped to investigate, and instinctively took this photo:

It's hard to tell with a 2D camera, but the corner of the sidewalk is loose, and beneath the corner is a cavity. If not fixed, it's the makings of damage or injury for sure. I phoned it in to the City.

By mid-May, white arrows had been spray-painted on the affected squares of sidewalk, indicating their imminent replacement.

Of course, it was only after this that I learned that these squares of sidewalk were laid over one hundred years ago. A reliable source recalls a former neighbour square (since replaced in the '80s) bearing a plaque announcing the year of construction as 1905, not unlike this one, photographed in 1994 along Queen Elizabeth Drive near Third avenue (also since replaced):

The sidewalk can be identified by a distinctive reddish tinge in some of the aggregate making up the concrete. Here's another shot on a dry day--click to enlarge (as always). There are still some other squares along this block surviving, that you can go and see, such as the pair in front of McDonald's.

It wasn't until early this month (July 6) that the segment of concrete was turned to rubble in preparation for replacement. I doubt the workers realized they were dismantling 104-year-old concrete:

They also took out the asphalt boulevard between the sidewalk and the roadway. The next day, a concrete form was installed over the compressed gravel bed. In this shot, we can also see a number of other sidewalk varieties installed on this block over the decades (interesting aside: my great-grandfather researched concrete formulae in his lab in the Confederation building, now used to house MPs):

The following day, the sidewalk was poured, adding one more entry to the walking variety show:

And soon, the boulevard was re-paved with asphalt. Somehow I doubt it will still be there a century from today.

There is an important lesson to learn from these two humble pieces of sidewalk, which I'll discuss in Part II.

Gone Festin'

Sorry the blog has been quiet. I've been volunteering at Bluesfest, supervising the volunteers at the free valet bike parking. Lots of fun.

While the bike parking is fast and free, we are once again collecting donations for Citizens for Safe Cycling and Blues in the Schools.

Why don't you stop by?