The City of Ottawa’s built heritage sub-committee has recommended that city council move to preserve two examples of a vanishing style of architecture in the downtown core.
The houses, Snowdon House at 66 Lisgar St. and Magee House at 78 Lisgar St., are considered excellent examples of the Queen Anne revival style of architecture, according to the recommendation report prepared ahead of the Oct. 9 heritage committee meeting. The committee recommended that city council designate the houses as heritage buildings under provisions of the Ontario Heritage Act.
“It just means that there’s a process in place to protect the buildings from inappropriate changes or from demolition,” says Lesley Collins, one of three heritage planners for the city.
Collins says the buildings’ occupants, members of HMCS Bytown and the Air Cadet League of Canada, have not been formally informed by the city of the proposed designation. However, the occupants are aware it is currently under debate and have indicated that they will be investigating how the heritage designation could affect their use of the buildings.
Should city council approve the recommendation passed by the heritage committee, the city would release a “notice of intent to designate” to the building’s occupants and the larger community through local newspapers. This notice would allow citizens to appeal the proposed designation.
“The goal of the program is to tell the story of Ottawa through its buildings,” says Collins. “Historic buildings provide us with some context of where we’ve come from in terms of the history of the community.”
The report noted that Charles Magee, a prominent businessman in the Centretown community in the late 19th century, commissioned both the houses on property he had acquired from the Colonel By estate. The purchase of the property was made by the Freehold Association of Ottawa, which turned the estate lands into a wealthy residential area, the report explains. Queen Anne revival was a very popular style of architecture for downtown dwellings in the 19th century, says Peter Coffman, supervisor of the history and theory of architecture program at Carleton University.
“It was designed to be a sensible, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing and relatively understated style of domestic architecture,” says Coffman, describing Queen Anne revival. “Queen Anne buildings often show quite beautiful workmanship.”
Coffman says it’s important to preserve these buildings not simply for their historical importance, but also their aesthetic appeal.
“They give us a kind of beauty that modern architecture will never give us,” explains Coffman. “What was built in the later 18th and early part of the 19th century was different from modernism, and it has its own unique beauty.”
Magee had one house built for himself and commissioned the other for his daughter, Caroline Magee, upon her marriage to Rev. J.M. Snowdon, says the report. It continues, saying that Snowdon was the minister at St. George’s Anglican Church on nearby Metcalfe Street and became an archdeacon in 1920.
“He lived there for a very long time,” Coffman says of Snowdon. “He was quite an important member of the Anglican community in Ottawa and with the Anglican Church of Canada.”
The report says the Magee descendants remained owners of Magee House until the 1940s, when the building became a mess hall for officers of HMCS Bytown during the Second World War. Snowdon remained in his residence until the 1950s, the report says, and has since been home to a number of occupants. It is currently the national headquarters for the Air Cadet League of Canada.
If the buildings are designated, they would receive plaques describing their historical significance in Centretown and any proposed changes to the structures would require municipal approval.