Stephen Thirlwall
The City of Ottawa has proposed new boundaries for a Heritage Conservation District (HCD) in Western Centretown centred around Dundonald Park.
These districts are defined in the Ontario Heritage Act “for the preservation of historic buildings and neighbourhoods”.
There are three levels of heritage designation:
- individual heritage buildings/properties that receive a high level of protection;
- a heritage register of secondary buildings that may provide some protection from the redevelopment, and
- heritage conservation districts/communities/cultural landscapes with special significance and visual coherency providing some degree of protection.
Western Centretown as a whole is a “living” archive where the classic oldness still shows through on every street. Yet it has adapted to modern realities, with buildings built over 100 years ago blending with late 1990s townhouse complexes and even some more modern buildings.
A unique character and cohesiveness
As a distinct low-rise area, Western Centretown is clearly defined – bounded by Kent Street on the east, Bronson Avenue on the west, Gloucester Street on the north, and Catherine Street on the south.
The outer boundary can be trimmed back by excluding the northwestern block that is all high rises and the southeastern block that is the former intercity bus station, as well as most of the rest of Catherine Street that is non-heritage industrial/commercial. There are three or four old buildings just northwest of Gloucester and Lyon that should be included.
Essentially, this forms about a 46-block district that is very cohesive. Within this area, a very few buildings look visually out of place, particularly The Beer Store and Tim Hortons.
A community look and feel
Western Centretown consists almost entirely of two-to-three storey low-rise residential buildings/properties, with low-rise commercial strips on two secondary main streets (Somerset Street West and Gladstone Avenue) that partially divide it into three sub-neighbourhoods. Dundonald and McNabb Parks form two hubs for the community.
Overall, there is a very high degree of coherence in building age, height, materials, design and function. Diversity is in the range of conditions and the degree of building grandeur. But do these differences make some of the very similar houses of lesser heritage value?
The area looks and feels like a community with two schools for children and one for adults, a few churches, a community centre, the Bronson Centre, the Chinese-Canadian Cultural Centre, and the Montgomery Legion Hall. It is different from all surrounding areas, except for the edge of Central Centretown west of the Bank Street corridor and south of MacLaren, which could have been considered part of Western Centretown.
To the north is all high-rise residences, offices and commercial spaces; south is industrial space and the Queensway. Dalhousie, on the west, is a very different low-rise residential area with the Chinatown strip of numerous restaurants and shops. Like Central Centretown, Dalhousie is undergoing extensive redevelopment.
Over 80 percent of the buildings in Western Centretown were built between 90 and 156 years ago (1865-1931); the vast majority constructed between 1885 and 1914. The buildings are mostly quite large but vary from modest single houses to huge mansions and to duplexes, triplexes, and old-style row houses. There are a very limited number of small apartment blocks, unlike Central Centretown, which has many large ones.
Primarily, the buildings are red-orange brick, many with intricate brickwork designs and often fancy wooden balconies and trims. A few are clapboard, stucco or other materials. While a lot of renovation has been done throughout the area to bring homes closer to current-day standards, the outward appearance of their historic age is very much evident.
Between 1925 and the late 1990s, there seems to have been very little new building, but some infill, replacement houses and apartments. Many are over 50 years old. Several buildings that I thought were from the ‘50s-’70s turned out to be around 100 years old. During 1997-1999, a rush of rowhouse “communities” were constructed. There are very few mid rises, probably built during this same time.
Since 2010, there has been some high-rise development at the northern edge, and a small amount of low-rise infill or replacement multi-unit buildings. In at least three of the newer construction sites, rebuilding followed fires that destroyed the previous buildings.
Over the years, waves of intensification have caused many older homes to be subdivided into multiple units (apartments, rooms to rent in homes and extensions, and rooming houses). There also has been a small increase in commercial spaces within old houses (e.g. the small funeral home on Cooper Street).
The community of Western Centretown remains very much alive and vibrant in spite of many changes of residents and increasing diversity. Residents are attracted here by the history, ambiance, closeness to services and shops, ease of getting around, quietness, relative lack of congestion and, earlier on, reasonable prices. This is truly worth preserving. As a whole, the community fits the 15-minute neighbourhood model. To break up this community in ways that disrupt this model should be discouraged.
A heritage landscape and community is a place where people live. It is not just the buildings. I was reminded of this when an elderly man stopped to chat as I was cleaning up my front garden before winter. Within minutes, he told me a detailed history of the block I live on – naming previous inhabitants, describing original buildings and changes, and explaining that the original residents were primarily Francophone.
Defining an HCD
The proposed size of the Western Centretown HCD covers approximately 9 blocks of the complete community. It excludes the outer edges, perhaps to make smoother boundary lines. The proposal also focuses only on a particular concentration of clearly heritage buildings near Dundonald Park. This automatically excludes the southern third of Western Centretown served by McNabb Park, even though it contains some equally impressive historical age and style buildings. Three very old and important churches are also excluded.
Even if only the Dundonald focus is taken, there are various groups of old and classic buildings throughout the wider catchment area that are not very different from the ones included in the HCD. (These buildings, however, may be on the City of Ottawa’s heritage register. If a building is not in an HCD but is on that register, there’s an automatic 60-day freeze on threatened demolitions to allow city staff sufficient time to assess a building’s heritage value in detail and recommend heritage designation if it meets the criteria.)
Applying the 15-minute community overlay, the boundary should at least extend right across from Kent to Bronson and from the north side of Lisgar to the south side of Florence, excluding the McNabb complex in the southwest corner and a few small areas along the north and eastern edges. This area includes the equivalent of about 25 neighbourhood blocks.
To ensure preservation?
Preservation will require strictly maintaining a maximum building height of four storeys; minimizing the breadth and depth of new building sizes, especially not permitting buildings and parking to completely fill the properties; minimizing the number of new replacement buildings; and assisting owners in maintaining the designated heritage buildings. This maintenance is is becoming more difficult in terms of finding materials, understanding old style construction, and increasing costs.
Tall and wide mid-rise and high-rise development have no place here.