30. Quinn’s Row

Built around 1889, this four-unit terrace at 245-251 Nepean Street (near Kent Street) is the sole surviving intact 19th-century multiple wooden dwelling in Centretown. By the 1870s, there were many similar row-houses built for labourers, many who were engaged in the construction of Saint Patrick’s Basilica nearby.

A modest, 2 1/2 storey row house, it features balanced and asymmetrical window and door openings and is covered in milled clapboard, with wide plank pine flooring in the interior. All four entrances are enlivened with a simple bracketed gabled portico.

The terrace was built for Patrick Quinn, a local contractor and Centretown landlord who was an active member of Saint Patrick’s Parish and took a prominent part in the erection of Saint Patrick’s Basilica on Kent Street.

As a young man, Patrick Quinn immigrated to Canada from Clonmel, Tipperary in Ireland, settling in Bytown around 1852. He was employed as a surveyor by lumberman Daniel O’Connor before he joined the city as Assistant Engineer under Major Hugo Perry, where he was actively involved in the construction of the first waterworks and sewer system. He later branched out into building construction, owning several properties in what were the Central and Wellington wards of the city.

Patrick Quinn died in 1924 aged 90 at the family’s large home of 46 years located at 352 Nepean Street near Bay Street (now demolished). A tribute in The Ottawa Journal remembered him as “a very conscientious citizen with a deep interest in civic and federal politics.”

Quinn’s Row was designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act in 1986 as a rare example of vernacular architecture of its type left in Centretown. The designation was requested by the Centretown Citizens Community Association.

Photos: Old Ottawa And Bytown Pics/monsieurlebrun; Painting/peinture, Ben Babelowsky, Ottawa Citizen, September 22, 1991.; Patrick Quinn c.1880s / Private collection

SOURCES

City of Ottawa Bylaw 1986-042 "Designation of Quinn's Row,” 1986.

Ottawa: A Guide to Heritage Structures. Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee, City of Ottawa, 2000.

Workers History Museum, 2024 Calendar: Where They Lived

Heritage Ottawa, Newsletter, January-February 1986, Vol. 14. No. 1.

“Patrick Quinn, Obituary,” The Ottawa Journal, November 12, 1924, p. 7.

“Patrick Quinn, Tribute,” The Ottawa Journal, November 13, 1924, p. 2.