Excerpt from report by Jolson Lim, LCA Canada Summer Jobs student
One of the oldest homes in Lowertown East is situated on the north side of Clarence Street, between King Edward and Nelson. As early as the 1860s, a one-storey wood-frame structure existed there; the current two-and-a-half storey house first appeared on fire insurance plans in 1877. A brick veneer was added some time before 1912, as well as the unique large wooden rear buildings, used as stables in the past. As late as 1950, an advertisement in the Ottawa Journal indicated ponies, buggies and saddles for sale at the property. And in the 1920-30s, James and Sarah Lawlor ran a business that sold a washing compound called Savage Water out of the property.
Ornate verandas, cornices, porches and other exterior decor were added later. In a photo of James and Sarah Lawlor from the 1930s, a rounded classical column is holding up the front porch and the porch railing spindles are curved. With time, deterioration of the more ostentatious features prompted removal rather than restoration.
The lot was first depicted on a very early 1846 ordnance map showing the name of William Cherry, the first resident. At the time, most residents living on Ordnance lands either paid rents or squatted on the relatively large amount of open land directly east of the Canal. Situated on the north side of Parry (now Clarence) Street, the lot stretched to Murray Street.
William and Ann Cherry had left Ireland for Canada in the early 1840s, like many Irish immigrants, due to economic hardship. Their first son, William Jr., was born in Kingston in 1844. He would eventually become an alderman in Wellington Ward. The Cherry family moved to ByTown in 1846, where their second son, Samuel, was born. They were Presbyterians and likely attended the small wooden church at the corner of Daly Avenue and Cumberland Street.
William Cherry was a joiner and no doubt built the original one-storey wood-frame house. His son Samuel became a carpenter, and it was probably after he married Margaret Gibson in 1870 that he built the larger house for his growing family. They had twelve children, but at least five died before their second birthdays. The Cherry family left the home in 1893, moving to a similarly-designed home on Somerset Street.
The house then had a succession of occupants. Alphonse Valiquette and later Henry McClory lived there while working at the Printing Bureau on St Patrick Street. In 1914, George A. Boudreault was still working at the House of Commons when he rented the home from Hormisdas Major. At the time of his retirement in 1933, at age 72, Boudreault was the longest-serving public servant on Parliament Hill, having served every prime minister from John A. Macdonald to R.B. Bennett. In 1920, Abraham Raphael Torontow bought 257 Clarence and moved in with his large family. He was the son of Joseph Torontow. who had arrived in Ottawa in 1909 and founded Torontow Hardware Company at the corner of Dalhousie and Clarence.
In the 1960s, 257 Clarence Street found itself located on the site of a proposed high-rise development and a sunken King Edward Freeway, the fourth phase of Lowertown East’s urban renewal plan. Fortunately, the proposed expropriations and demolitions of these neighbourhood blocks did not occur and the property is now part of a municipal heritage overlay and is on the current City of Ottawa heritage register.