James Maloney and his Macdonald Gardens real estate
By Victoria Ellis and Nancy Miller Chenier
Every building in Lowertown has a story. The three distinctive apartment buildings that stand proudly together along Cobourg Street, across from Macdonald Gardens, have a shared story. The Park View at 126 Cobourg Street, with a central entrance, balconies and arched windows was designed by the prominent Ottawa architectural firm of Werner Ernst Noffke in 1928. The pre-1915 Cobourg twins – the Esther Apartments at 122 and the Cobourg Apartments at 124 – with large front bays, a side-hall plan and decorative cornices bear similarities to Noffke’s first residence on Wilbrod.
As a grouping of elegant small scale red brick residences facing the park, they certainly share a common architectural aesthetic. Indeed, they were all owned by and built for James Maloney, then a poultry and game merchant at the Byward Market. Maloney first invested in property on Cobourg Street after the Ottawa Improvement Commission (precursor to the National Capital Commission) began to transform the old cemetery site into a park. By 1912, the area had experienced renewed residential growth and Maloney was living at 122 Cobourg Street with his wife Esther and several daughters.
He eventually moved into one of his apartments at the Park View and lived there until Esther’s death in 1939. James Maloney’s investment in these three properties was a testament to his business acumen and the prevalent recognition that the middle class wanted rental accommodation.
His purchase and development of these lots beside the newly constructed streetcar barn (now the site of Macdonald Manor) launched him on a lucrative future in real estate. His 1952 obituary notes that he was a retail and wholesale grocer for many years and latterly a real estate broker. On his death, his will indicated substantial investment wealth, including property in Sandy Hill.
What else do we know about the background of James Edward Maloney? He was the grandson of the Irish-born James Maloney who established the first long-standing private school on Clarence Street in 1838. His father was William Maloney, who ran a grocery business on that same street from the 1860s to the 1890s. His grandfather was commemorated by William Pittman Lett – Ottawa’s first city clerk and early Lowertown resident – in his epic poem titled Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants. The association with the Lett family continued when a descendant lived at 124 Cobourg Street as a neighbour of grandson James Maloney in the 1930s.
The Park View building, undoubtedly designed by the Noffke firm, is a charming small scale apartment building constructed for owner occupancy as well as for investment. Together, the three buildings in this Cobourg cluster have an aesthetic relationship to the park, the surrounding neighbourhood and to each other that make for a valued heritage streetscape.