Last-ditch bid to save 19th century Rideau Street home might fall short
By Michael Woods, Ottawa Citizen May 12, 2014
A community activist’s last-ditch effort to save a 19th-century home on Rideau Street from being demolished might be too little, too late.
Marc Aubin, who plans to run for city council in Rideau-Vanier this fall, says the Stewart-Dworkin House at 236 Rideau Street should be preserved as a treasured piece of the city’s history.
But the city’s planning department says alterations to the home have diminished its architectural significance, and it has lost its contextual value as Rideau Street has been developed.
Demolition of the home just west of King Edward Avenue has already started. Aubin started a petition over the weekend to save it. By Monday evening, the petition had more than 550 signatures.
The home was built in 1877 for John Stewart, a prominent Ottawa contractor whose jobs included the Supreme Court and the West Block of Parliament Hill. The property changed hands a number of times until Abraham Dworkin, a prominent Jewish furrier, and his wife bought the home in 1921. It was home to Dworkin Furs until 2012, when the store closed and developer Phoenix Homes bought the property. There are now plans to build two 26-storey towers on the site.
Aubin recently tracked down the original owner’s descendants in San Diego, California, who sent him a photo of the home from the 1880s. That, along with his other research into the home, should be enough to halt the demolition for now, he said.
“There should be a pause and maybe a re-evaluation of the value of the property at this point,” said Aubin, a former president of the Lowertown Community Association. “I really think they could still go ahead with the two towers and do something maybe to integrate the façade of the house.”
However, the city says the community has known about the home’s fate for some time.
A summary of facts on the building prepared by Sally Coutts, co-ordinator of the city’s heritage services section, said, “Alterations to it over the years have removed its original character and radically diminished its architectural significance.”
Those changes, according to a city heritage survey, are as follows:
The city also said the Dworkin building has lost its contextual value as a result of redevelopment on Rideau Street. The city considers a building’s context an important factor when determining its significance.
That isn’t enough to convince Aubin.
“Some of the features are missing but realistically every heritage building gets altered, and we’ve seen lots of examples of restoration,” he said.
The man he hopes to unseat, Coun. Mathieu Fleury, suggested that Aubin is looking for some early election fodder.
“He’s not a candidate yet, but you can see his positioning. That (demolition) permit was given in December 2013,” he said. “It’s kind of weird to come in now and say, ‘Reconsider, do this, do that.’
“We’re already further down the process.”
Fleury said he has major concerns about what could be built on the site and wants to avoid a “canyon effect” on the corridor. The city is challenging Phoenix’s site plan at the Ontario Municipal Board. But the heritage matter has long been dealt with by the community, he said.
“The process was followed. Red flags weren’t raised,” he said.
The city has designated three other areas where Ottawa’s Jewish community lived and worked upon their arrival in the ByWard Market, Lowertown and Sandy Hill, Coutts wrote in her summary.
“It would make more sense to highlight those aspects of community history than to protect this one structure with little architectural significance and no context.”
Aubin said he plans to file his nomination papers in June, and that preserving heritage buildings will be a cornerstone of his campaign. He said he takes issue with the way the city’s planning department determines heritage designations, saying bureaucrats shouldn’t be making the decisions.
“We really falling short on this, and there doesn’t seem to be any champions on city council that are really taking this seriously,” he said. “People just put their blinders on and say, ‘Well, the experts have said it’s not heritage.’ It’s not as simple as that.”
mwoods@ottawacitizen.com
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