STORIED HOME
Built in the 1830s by Braddish Billings, Laws House began as a one-room log schoolhouse
“If these walls could talk, the stories they could tell …”
As a country marking 150 years, our nation is looking back on the past, marking our accomplishments while, we hope, learning from our mistakes.
But as cities evolve, the brick and mortar walls that link us to our past are often torn down and replaced with glass and concrete, in turn disconnecting us from our past.
For one family, the Jacobsons, the past is all around them in the form of a heritage home built around an 1830s log house.
Located on Riverside Drive near Bank Street, the Laws House is named after Robert Laws, who purchased the home in 1949. It is, the current owners have heard, the oldest continuously inhabited home in Ottawa.
What’s more, it started life as a one-room log schoolhouse built by pioneer Braddish Billings, the first settler on the south side of the Rideau River.
As the heritage plaque hanging by the main entrance states, the first class was taught in 1867.
When the Laws acquired the building, they quickly set out to renovate, adding dormer windows on the second level and a fireplace on the lower level to name a few of the improvements.
In 1988, they expanded once again to add a kitchen, flanked by a sitting room on one side and a dining room on the other.
Laws House remained largely unchanged aside from landscaping until Lori Jacobson and her husband Cal MacWilliam bought it in 2013.
“I’ve always been drawn to antiques and an appreciation for heritage and Canadiana, in particular, so this place really struck me,” says Jacobson.
Speaking in the multi-windowed sitting room just off the kitchen, she looks out into the backyard.
“I love that it’s an oasis. I can walk to the bank and the Starbucks and everything. When I get into the house and out to the backyard, it’s just so treed and the canopy of so many old trees and it really feels like you’re in the country,” she says.
Knowing how unique her home was, Jacobson decided to make it a destination and listed it on the popular vacation rental site, Airbnb.
Since then, she’s entertained hundreds of guests in the original log-cabin part of her home.
“It’s fantastic to be part of and share that history, and I feel very fortunate to be able to live here for a number of years, hopefully.”