Beyond the plaque: 163-165 Bolton Street

By Nancy Miller Chenier

This is the first in a new series that tells the stories of some of the 50+ individually designated heritage buildings in our community.

The Ontario Heritage Act, first enacted fifty years ago in March 1975, allowed our municipality to designate individual properties for their architectural and historical value. When the one and one-half storey clapboard double residence at 163-165 Bolton Street was designated in 1985, the focus was on its architecture and the plaque makes specific reference to its “bell-cast, two-sided, mansard structure with gabled dormers.”

The designation by-law included 1897 as the building date but at the time, a review by the Ontario Heritage Conservation Board suggested that its form and simplicity of construction related to an earlier period, probably 1860-1870. So, the building continues to present a little mystery. Was it a reconstructed double perhaps combining the two earlier single dwellings detailed on the 1878 Fire Insurance Plan? Structural reuse or repurposing was not uncommon in Lowertown as was the custom of moving or relocating buildings.

The building designation did not reference the people who built it and contributed to the community. Land registry records indicate that in 1896, Thomas O’Brien bought the whole lot from Francois X. Leblanc for $600. The 163-165 Bolton building was the first of two buildings constructed on the lot to replace the two existing single buildings. At the time, O’Brien was working as a millhand and lived with his father-in-law, Patrick O’Meara, a lumber salesman – occupations that provided opportunities to acquire the necessary building materials from local sources.

Thomas O’Brien is first listed at 163 Bolton in one half of the small double by 1897, but a year later had moved with his wife, Mary Ann O’Meara, and two daughters, Mary Catherine and Bertha, to the now completed large double at 159-161 Bolton on the west side of the lot. Another daughter, Hannah, was born a few years later and newspaper stories suggest that all the girls enjoyed active social lives. Like many of their neighbours with Irish backgrounds, the O’Brien family were members of St. Brigid Roman Catholic parish and in later years, Thomas O’Brien was a respected caretaker at St. Brigid’s Separate School. 

Thomas died in 1922 and ownership of the two Bolton Street buildings remained with his wife Mary Ann. Over time the family members moved to other parts of the city and various occupants lived at the addresses. After Mary Ann’s death in 1950, the O’Brien daughters sold the two properties to separate owners and the stories of the little double with the bell cast roof and its larger companion, both excellent examples of Lowertown vernacular double residences, continue.