Wilton Crescent
My wife and I are currently living in Geneva, Switzerland and renting our home on Wilton Crescent to a young family. We will return in the summer 2006.
I've heard that Wilton Crescent used to be called Tackaberry, and that before the construction of Landsdowne Park and the Queen Elizabeth Driveway it was the main road leaving Ottawa for Kingston. This may explain why Wilton Crescent is unusually wide. In the fall there are footings visible across the middle of Brown's Inlet which seem to have formed the foundation for a bridge across the water there. Can you tell me more about the development of Landsdowne, the Queen E. Driveway, Wilton Crescent and the Browns Inlet area?
I'm delighted to know that people in Geneva are tracking life back home in the Glebe.
Before the current Bank Street Bridge was built in 1912, at least four buildings had street address on the west side of Bank Street south of Wilton Crescent. When the old Bank Street swing bridge was replaced, these were expropriated to allow for the footings for the higher, wider and longer current bridge. The most southerly of these addresses (1038 Bank Street) shows up in the 1890 City of Ottawa Directory as being the residence of Isaac B. Tackaberry, auctioneer and real estate agent. Wilton Crescent was known as Tackaberry Avenue from at least 1896 to 1909, when it received it's current name.
Wilton Crescent accommodated the southern loop of the Bank Street Streetcar Line that came down Monk and returned to Bank Street on Wilton Crescent. After 1912, the new Bank Street Bridge allowed streetcar tracks to be laid into Ottawa South.
Queen Elizabeth Driveway was originally named The Rideau Canal Driveway, and was maintained by the Ottawa Improvement Commission, a precursor to the National Capital Commission. The Driveway was re-named in 1939 at the time of the royal visit to Ottawa of King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. Up until 1928, it looped through the city- owned Lansdowne Park on a right of way from the park gates at Fifth Avenue and the canal to cross Bank Street at Wilton Crescent. For many years, a range of 14 large parallel livestock barns lined the south end of Lansdowne Park abutting the Rideau Canal (see photo). These burned down in 1927, and in 1928, the Driveway was extended along the canal from Fifth Avenue, south of Lansdowne Park to join an older section of the Driveway that ran west from Bank Street Bridge to Dow's Lake.
The east end of Wilton Crescent is 60 feet wide, which is the 'standard' width for residential streets in the Glebe. I use the term 'standard' loosely, because there was quite a range. Oakland is only 50 feet wide, and Holmwood (west of Bank Street) is only 36 feet wide. Woodlawn is 66 feet wide. Monk Street varies in width from 50 feet north of Woodlawn, to 66 feet between Woodlawn and the lane between Oakland and Wilton, then it narrows to 30 feet wide where it meets Wilton.
I have no evidence of a road bridge across Brown's Inlet, but I do know that a footbridge crossed Brown's Inlet to meet the west end of Wilton Crescent in the 1920'w & 1930's.