By Curtis Wolfe
The building at 49-51 St. Andrew Street has an extensive history of owners and tenants who were predominantly Francophones and contributed in many ways to the Lowertown community and Ottawa’s history. The dwelling dates from 1887 as a pièce sur pièce construction in the Second Empire style, with a Mansard roof and rounded dormer windows on the third storey. Originally, the back of the lot had sheds and stables for horses.
It was possibly constructed by Edward Griffin, who seems to have had an agreement with Alex Workman and Ann McGillivray to build and sell the property. Griffin and Workman had once co-owned a hardware and lumber shop at the corner of Rideau and Friel, and they were both active in the community’s affairs. Griffin provided mortgages to many Lowertown properties and Workman had previously been elected Mayor of Ottawa in 1860.
Records indicate that Griffin, Workman and McGillivray sold 49-51 St. Andrew to Jacob (or Iacobe) Courselles in February 1887. Courselles also bought 53-55 St. Andrew in the same year, and 53 became his primary residence. It’s unclear if he arranged the building of 49-51 or happened to purchase it shortly after construction. Canada’s Passenger and Immigration List recorded a Jacob Coursalle born in 1840 in Italy who immigrated to Canada in 1870. He worked as a cab driver in Lowertown and later as a labourer and grocer. There are various spellings of his family name; it’s possible that it was originally Curcilia and that in different situations it was anglicized as Coursold or francisized as Courselles, among many other spellings. (An unrelated Jacob Coursolle also worked as a solicitor on York Street.) As an owner at this time, he would have been neighbours with the Graziadei, Mandia, Guttadauria and other Italian families nearby as Lowertown was the initial neighbourhood where Italian immigrants settled in the city.
For many years the building at 49-51 St Andrew was a boarding house with rooms rented out to tenants. Some residents of the building worked in fields such as carpentry, tinsmithry, shoemaking and the timber trade. Several were recognized for significant work responsibilities in the community.
One notable early tenant at 49 St Andrew Street was Alexandre Beaupré, who was living there when he drove Ottawa’s first electric streetcar out of the Albert Street garage on a trial trip in 1891. His passengers were all children. For several decades after 1910, the Richard/St-Pierre family were owners and sometime residents of 49 St. Andrew. The family’s dry goods store, A. D. Richard & Sons, was located at 537-539 Sussex (the current location of Social Restaurant + Lounge), before the store moved to 52 Rideau in the late 1890s. In the 1940s and 1950s, Donat Meunier lived at 49 and was a union leader active in several local and national trade unions that sought to advance the working conditions of plasterers, painters and bricklayers.
At the time of his death in 1933, Captain Alfred Ranger was a well-known resident at 51 St Andrew Street. Before the Alexandra Bridge was built, Captain Ranger regularly ferried passengers across the river between Ottawa and Hull. He was said to be the only man who could pilot a loaded barge up the Chaudière Rapids “from open water to the lumber mills at the foot of the falls.”
In 1984, Rhéal Leroux renovated the building based on plans by Lowertown-based architect Barry Padolsky. Leroux told the Ottawa Citizen that the exterior would remain “basically unchanged”, but there were extensive renovations of the interior, and a two-story addition was built behind the original building. That year, their work merited a Heritage Conservation Award from the city. Leroux is a well-known entrepreneur and was awarded the Order of Canada in 2018 for his extensive contributions to the Franco-Ontarian community and for his role in organizing major events such as Winterlude, the Franco-Ontarian Festival, the 1984 Papal Visit, and the 2001 Jeux de la Francophonie in Ottawa and Gatineau.