St. Elijah's Housing is a building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Originally a church, it is currently a block of 40 residential apartments.
The site at Lyon Street and Maclaren Street in the northwest of Centretown was originally home to a Pentecostal congregation. It was purchased by Antiochian Orthodox Lebanese immigrants who opened the St. Elijah Antiochian Orthodox Church in 1931.[1] The original building was destroyed in a fire in 1949; the current Byzantine structure was erected to replace it.[2] With the Lebanese Civil War Ottawa saw an influx of Antiochian Orthodox immigrants. The congregation thus decided to move to a larger structure on Riverside Drive. The building was sold in 1989 to a partnership of the local Anglican Diocese and CCOC, the Centretown Citizens (Ottawa) Corporation, a non-profit housing trust.[3] In the Anglican half of the structure are twenty apartments for homeless women. In the CCOC portion there are twenty bachelor apartments.[4] The conversion of the church into apartments while retaining the building's exterior character received a City of Ottawa Heritage Award.
References
edit- ^ "A Seventy Year Retrospective". Saint Elias Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
- ^ "Property name: St. Elijah's Housing". Ontario's Places of Worship. Ontario Heritage Trust. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
- ^ "341 Lyon Street". Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
- ^ Langston, Patrick. "Former churches find new life as family homes". Ottawa Citizen. Postmedia Network Inc. Retrieved 21 May 2015.