By Karyn Pugliese
Centretowners of all classes once spurned apartment buildings as evil and immoral abodes.
But when famed Ottawa architect, Cecil Burgess, designed an apartment building for fashionable Metcalfe Street — the old stomping ground of Mackenzie King and Sir John A. Macdonald — he was fashioning an apartment building for the elite.
The Duncannon was declared a heritage building in 1996, for its outer design and its importance in Centretown’s social history. Today, the Duncannon testifies to an era when the once-dreaded apartment building overcame notoriety and became a fashionable dwelling place for Centretown’s elite.
Passers-by are treated to a dazzling display of sunlight sparkling across the Duncannon’s leaded glass windows; each pane cut into dozens of diamond-shaped sections. The H-shaped construction of the building maximizes the privacy of its occupants. But the two protruding wings and its retreating center also created the air of a small castle. The stone work gracing the base and crown of the flat-topped building, the Indiana limestone entranceway and the enclosed courtyard adds to the castle effect. And tempted the well-to-do into adopting a new lifestyle.
In the pre-war period apartments invoked images of high-density living in British flats and heavily industrialized cities.
“There was a saying that apartments housed two types of people, the newly wed and the nearly dead,” says John Weaver, dean of graduate studies at McMaster University and co-author of Housing the North American City.
“And even worse was the thought of Parisian apartment living because it was associated with loose morales,” adds Weaver. “Parents might say, ‘Oh you’re going to live in an apartment building? Isn’t that a bit racy?’”
Larger cities accepted apartment dwellings more readily. But Ottawa, still a conservative small town with plenty of house-building space, shuddered at the idea, says historian John Taylor, Carleton University’s specialist in Ottawa’s urban history.
The gradual acceptance of apartments grew from the necessity of housing a growing tide of unmarried, white-collar professionals who flooded Centretown in the 1920s.
The federal government employed roughly 1,000 workers in 1900, a number that mushroomed to an estimated 9,000 in the interwar period, says Taylor.
Architects struggled to make apartments respectable by giving them regal sounding names. Another strategy, noticeable in the Duncannon, was to embellish the architecture with symbols of wealth, tradition and security.
“It wasn’t uncommon to have a separate entrance for services. Ice carriers and milkmen would use the separate entrance way,” says Weaver. A sign politely advertising the rear “trade entrance” still hangs next to the front doors of the Duncannon.
But it was the social status of the elites drawn to the Duncannon that made flat living trendy.
The famed photographer Yusef Karsh was once an occupant. George Black, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1930 to 1935, lived in the Duncannon. As did his wife, Martha, who would become the second woman ever elected to the House of Commons.
It was home to young men and women climbing to the top of the public service and well-known diplomats, such as Charles Ritchie.
Ottawa was growing up and Centretowner’s marvelled at the new and beautiful buildings gracing their streets.