The Canyons of Ashburnham: 383 Albert

 Claridge "Moon" — watch it grow. I'm posting this for my research assistant Kay-El, who thinks the Ottawa skyline needs more cranes.

It'll look something like this when it's finished. Decent affordable housing? I don't think so.

Primrose at Cambridge

 If 72-74 Cambridge Street North seems to loom at an especially gangly angle, don't blame my camera-work. The house was built on a wedge-shaped foundation, giving it that "cyclopean" air.

The present siding is about ten years old and dates to a renovation that saw this historical corner store converted for residential use. Google Street View imagery from spring 2009 shows the Cambridge Food Mart when it still served the St. Vincent Hospital neighbourhood, clad in what may well have been the original, wooden siding, painted a cheery turquoise, with over a century of paint-jobs underneath.

The store appears on Goad's 1888 sheet #58, labeled "Groc." — a wooden (yellow) build, its wonky footprint evident, its corner mounted door proclaiming its function.

The City Directory for the same year lists the building's Cambridge Street address thus...

Ashburnham sunrise

 Looking west — warmer days ahead, we hope.

Insofar as Bytown was a preplanned community (1826), Upper Town, especially north of Wellington, was the designated enclave of the "haves." Soon enough, the monied class expanded their range southward, into the cliff-top Ashburnham district.

Even as this was happening, Bytown became Ottawa (1855), the Capital of Canada (1857), and an influx of civil servants turned the area immediatley west of the downtown core into something rather different — the middle-class sprawl of Centretown and beyond.