Showing posts with label housing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housing. Show all posts

Monday, March 15, 2021

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...

Monday, March 1, 2021

2 Robinson Avenue


 Here's an eye-grabber from the Ottawa Business Journal...
"A Montreal company wants to build more than 1,600 residential units as part of a five-tower development at the former site of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Sandy Hill.

Place Dor​ée Real Estate Holdings has filed an application with the city for a plan that would see four highrises of 30 storeys each as well as a nine-storey building at 2 Robinson Ave.  

Located near the intersection of Nicholas Street and the Queensway, the wedge-shaped, 5.7-acre plot of land used to be the home of the Iranian Cultural Centre. The facility closed in 2012 after the federal government under then-prime minister Stephen Harper expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada..."

"Place Dor​ée" has approximately zero web presence.

Saturday, February 20, 2021

a Golden Triangle curiosity


 This set of four condominiums at 74 Somerset West was placed on the market in January of 1977. The building resembles nothing else in the neighbourhood — like a toaster in a cornfield. The lot was originally the site of a pre-1890, 2½-storey brick home.

(D. Chouinard, iPhone 11 pro)


(January 15 1977, ad by Sampson & McNaughton)