By Nancy Miller Chenier
Currently two buildings – a double cottage described as Lowertown vernacular and a two-storey flat-roofed double with a brick facade – stand on a large lot on Dalhousie Street between Boteler and Bolton. They are flanked by a large frame house and a low-rise brick multi-unit building. When taken together, this varied assortment of structures tells a story spanning close to two centuries of housing for our early Lowertown families. And for more than a century, these humble buildings have collectively presented a little changed view of one of our typical heritage streetscapes.
In 2022, a development proposed for the site envisioned a dramatic change for this block in the Lowertown West Heritage Conservation District. If the proposal is accepted, the collective appearance of all the buildings will be altered by the insertion of an apartment building with 25 units rising four storeys in the rear greenspace. This structure would be built to overlap with the original brick double, and the construction would entail the removal of the double cottage, which would be replaced by a rebuilt façade joining the new development.
Like so many of our humble vernacular buildings, the current homes were built by ordinary people with materials and styles commonly used at the time. The compact double cottage may have been the home of William Garrett, as identified in Robert Bell’s 1846 survey. At the time, Garrett was one of the fifty families already settled in Ordnance Lot 0, a section of land in the northeast corner of Bytown that had been appropriated by the British Board of Ordnance. When the land was released to Ottawa, registry records indicate that William Garrett, then a carter living on the east side of Dalhousie, got a deed to the property in 1858. After Garrett moved to a farm in Osgoode Township, the double cottage had a progression of tenants.
In 1888, Hugh McGuire bought the property from William Garrett’s daughter for $700. Hugh was the son of Hugh and Mary McGuire, early residents from Ireland who had initially settled on McTaggart Street in Lowertown. Eventually the family moved temporarily to try farming in the Gatineau Hills. The younger Hugh brought his farm experience with animals to Ottawa and established himself as a cab driver and carter who used his horses and carriages for transporting goods and people.
At the time, this section of Dalhousie Street had a significant mixture of Irish Catholics. James Mulrooney was in the corner store at Bolton in an 1860s building, a location where Hugh’s mother Mary had previously operated a store for several years after she was widowed in 1881. Other neighbours with Irish backgrounds and names like O’Toole, O’Reilly, Vaughan, Bingham, Sullivan, Ingram, were in the vicinity. St Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church was completed in 1890 to serve the English-speaking Irish Catholics in the area. Later in the 1890s, Bingham Park, named for Samuel Bingham, alderman and mayor, was home to the first playground in Ottawa.
For Hugh McGuire and his family, the location brought a sense of community and increased prosperity. Within a few years of his arrival in Ottawa, Hugh was operating a livery stable on George Street employing hostlers to care for his own and other people’s horses. The business of renting out horses and wagons occasionally resulted in a newspaper story about unpaid fares, stolen buggies, and overstressed horses, but it provided sufficient income to permit the construction of the two-storey brick double at 109-111 Dalhousie Street in 1905. This initiative reflected the development trend to investment properties in the expanding area. A couple of years earlier, James Vaughan built 101-107 Dalhousie, where he occupied the corner unit and rented the remainder.
(Photo: unknown date and source)
In 1914, Hugh and Anne moved into 111 Dalhousie, half of the brick double, leaving the 113 Dalhousie half for son Hugh, who settled there briefly with his new wife, Kathleen Larkin. After Hugh’s death in 1915, his son Hugh and his daughter Maryanne McGuire Warner lived with their families side by side in the brick double. In 1933, a third generation McGuire, nine-year-old Bobbie McGuire, received an honorable mention in the Ottawa Citizen for his story entitled “The Life of A Frog”, which showed “considerable originality.” In 1940, the lot with the two buildings was sold for $4,325 and by the 1950s, the property that had housed three generations of the McGuire family sheltered other occupants.
Like other heritage buildings in Lowertown, the cluster along this section of Dalhousie Street represents a story about people and events significant to the evolution of our community. The McGuires and their neighbours reflect the ordinary people supporting our city’s progress and development through daily activities that contributed to the built fabric, the cultural traditions and the economy of our city. This streetscape with its buildings and evidence of the families who lived in them makes a statement about long-term commitment and resilience. New development and changes in our Lowertown West Heritage Conservation District are expected. However, any proposal for development needs to respect the built heritage fabric on and around the site and ensure a positive contribution to the future of the community, both visually and demographically.