Ottawa’s vintage trophy home
Famed architect brought in luxury materials to create a ‘party palace’
The house at 418 Roger Rd., in a swanky suburb of Ottawa, turned heads even while it was being built.
A parade of luxurious materials going in and out kept neighbours agog as the bungalow, designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, took shape between 1958 and 1960.
White Georgian marble, California redwood and opulent adornments created a headturning trophy home for owners Eleanor and Paul Weiner, a commercial real estate developer.
“Mrs. Weiner went above and beyond in all the finishings and features,” says listing agent Dominique Milne. “It was the most extravagant home built in the (Alta Vista) neighbourhood at the time.” The mid-century modern showplace, designed by re- nowned Canadian architect James Strutt, was so luxurious that the contractor went bankrupt from all of Mrs. Weiner’s revisions and rejected materials. Or so the story goes.
That little nugget is contained in the 2011 novel A Sheltered Life, whose author Sheena Pennie lived there years ago, according to a historical account on sezlik.com, an Ottawa real estate brokerage.
The book’s teenage protagonist Connor “particularly liked viewing the house from the outside at night, with the inside recessed lights on, because it glowed like a delicate Japanese lantern.
“The best thing that Connor loved about his house,” continues Pennie’s story, “was that it was a party palace.”
Parties were a priority for Kathleen Ryan, who bought the house in the early ’70s when the Weiners moved to Florida. Ryan, a successful businesswoman and widow of CFRA radio station founder Frank Ryan, hosted many lavish gatherings, counting Frank Sinatra and Li- berace among her guests.
Ryan’s sister was Charlotte Whitton, an outspoken feminist who became Canada’s first female mayor, serving as Ottawa’s leader in the 1950s and ’60s. Whitton lived in the home towards the end of her life in 1975 while Ryan stayed until her death 20 years later.
Deceptively petite from the front, the pretty bungalow opens to a spatially grand interior with a distinctly ’60s style. It was so well-designed and built that, apart from kitchen and bathroom updates, little has been changed over the years, according to Milne, a broker with Engel & Volkers Ottawa Central.
“The original architecture — all the details — have been maintained,” she says of Strutt’s creation, considered the most opulent of his residential buildings.
The white marble façade, accented with redwood trim, pulls the eye upwards to clerestory windows and a pagodastyle roofline, creating butterfly ceilings in the rooms below.
Front doors of white-painted fir, overlaid with redwood panels, introduce the design motif of interlocking rectangles that repeats throughout the house.
Asked about its most eyecatching feature inside, Milne says: “The expanse of foyer — it’s very, very large.”
Measuring almost 18-by-13.5 feet, it’s a centrally located, multi-purpose space lined with marble and terrazzo, and illuminated by skylights.
On either side, there’s a family room with fireplace and sunken living room whose walls were once covered in turquoise and gold silk. A discreet doorway leads to the bedroom wing while at the far end, the dining room opens to a four-season solarium overlooking the back garden. The well-planned eat-in kitchen, originally decorated in turquoise and cream, features a large centre island and built-in bench for maximum seating.
Screens and pocket doors allow principal rooms to be closed off, depending on the need for private or public space.