In the Spanish Style

It's a sobering thought — Google Street View has been with us for fifteen years now. And apart from reminding us how old we're all getting, Street View has emerged as a tool for historical research. Not that we'd normally view the past fifteen years as History-with-a-capital-H, but think of it — pretty much any Ottawa building demolished within that time-frame has been documented by one of Google's roving camera cars — buildings erected in the 20th, even the 19th century. So yes, historical.

Such is the present case. This curiosity sat on the SE corner of North River Road and West Presland Road in Overbrook until some time between 2009 and 2012. We know this because the above image was taken in April of 2009. The next available photo, taken in May of 2012, shows a vacant lot.

The address, 1211 North River Road, happens to fall within the 12 acre plot we were looking at in my last post. Here's an aerial photo from that post, zoomed-in-on somewhat. The year is 1938.

The blue arrows point to our subject — if you squint and use your imagination, you can see the flat roof and a sharp shadow falling to the north of the building.  Notice how few houses have been built on an acreage that still looks like farmland. The rail bridge over the Rideau is the old CNoR/CN, abandoned in July of 1966  — its concrete footings are visible to this day, just below the river's surface, when the water is low.

The house was built in the mid-1930s. We know this because it doesn't appear on the 1933 aerial photo. The style, as I understand it, is something called  "Spanish Colonial Revival," which first appeared in North America in 1915 and seems to have largely petered out by WWII. Here's a discussion from the Vancouver Heritage Foundation.

"Spanish colonial style first came into the public eye at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. Following the popularity of the Mission Revival style, it drew inspiration from California’s Spanish colonial history. The style was initially based on Spanish colonial architecture from across Latin America. As popularity grew, other architects began looking to Spain for inspiration. As a result, the style has a mix of Old and New World elements. Features that distinguish Spanish Colonial Revival from Mission Revival include low-relief ornamentation, decorative cornices and wrought iron. In Vancouver, the style is found on elaborate mansions such as Rio Vista and Casa Mia but also smaller bungalows. The sprawling villas that lend inspiration to the style made it well-suited for grander homes.

Red tile roofs, white roughcast stucco, heavy robust wood accents around windows, doors and eaves make up the Spanish style. Ornamental wrought iron appears in grillwork over windows and door openings, and iron accents turn up in lanterns, sconces and railings. Patterned tile turns up as accents in the stucco in open-ended gables and on stair risers."

I don't know how well stucco stands up to hot, arid climates, but I've seen how it fares in Ottawa. Stains and cracks appear. Chunks fall off, hide in the grass, and destroy lawnmowers. This happens not only on Spanish-style houses but on the half-timbered walls and gables of Tudor Revival designs. Homes that would have delighted the eye when they were built, now look like sagging mold problems.

After 1211 N. River Road was demolished, the lot sat vacant until the fall of 2015. By spring of the following year, construction was largely complete on the matching pair of modernisms that now occupy the corner — part of western Overbrook's ongoing transformation into a "desirable" neighbourhood.

Some houses in Southwest Overbrook

 The roughly 12 acres directly south of F. X. Laderoute's 1911 "Overbrook Annex" subdivision had yet to enjoy any significant home-building as WWII loomed. You can see that area highlighted in gold on the above 1938 aerial photo. It was bounded by the old CPR tracks on the east, Wright Street on the south, River Road (then Russell Road) on the west, and the backyards of Prince Albert Street (of the "Annex") to the north. Originally, this area was treated as part of the Hurdman's Bridge settlement, but the heart of that community was obliterated in the latter 1950s by construction of the Queensway*.

The highlighted area was largely developed between 1945 and 1958 — indeed, the uniformity of housing style along Drouin Avenue and West Presland Road (square footprint, pre-ranch bungalows) bespeaks the work of a developer, not that of a mere subdivider.

Here are three house-portraits from the area. Click on the images for proper resolution.

20 West Presland —two-storey, hipped roof, high foundation, post-WWII.

84 Drouin — a small bungalow, built on a rise, sporting a wild front yard. A typical build for the street, suggesting late 40s to early 50s.

8 Presland, a charming little house with half-timbering on the upper storey facade. Built sometime between 1938 and 1945, per aerial photographs. This is me experimenting with a mid-century postcard colouring effect. 

*The old Hurdman's Bridge settlement was the built around the western end of Tremblay Road. In October of 1957 Queen Elizabeth II, then only four years into her reign (!!!), visited Ottawa. At one of several public events marking the occasion, the Queen inaugurated the construction of the Queensway, from a location just east of the Rideau River. To add dramatic flair, it was arranged that she would detonate a dynamite blast at the very point where the highway was to converge with, and be built over, the older road — we assume that homes in the immediate area had already been demolished. 

In an October 15 photo (Newtown for the Ottawa Citizen) the Queen stands on a temporary platform erected at the east end of Hurdman Bridge (the latter since demolished.) The photo was taken less than half an hour before noon EST, thus the sun shone from the south, at the right side of the image. Elizabeth stood at a podium on the west side of the platform facing the Rideau River. We can see the plume of an upward-directed explosion hanging in the air at a safe distance to the east — the Queen was apparently unaware that the explosion would occur behind her, hence her moment of perplexity.