Friday, February 27, 2009

Ottawa: The Unknown City

About 100 feet east of Sussex between Clarence and Murray in the Byward Market, the Tin House Court sits in one of a series of courtyards that move parallel to Sussex Drive. Mere feet away from a stone fountain, the tin house front wall was fixed to the side wall of the former Leblanc and Lemay store (upper left in the photo), which, in their time, sold more clothes in their ready-made clothing shop than any other store in Bytown. Taken from a frame house in the 1860s that sat on Guiges Street and put on display a dozen years later, the original house was owned from 1904 to 1913 by Honoré Foisy, a plumber, tinsmith and roofer who clad his entire house in tin. Being economical and weather-resistant, the metal was in common use at the time, but Foisy and his family embellished the porch, pediment, parapet, gazebo and window and door frames in a tin imitation of stone and wood in hundreds of pieces of paper-thin tin.

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