{"id":27645,"date":"2026-05-01T12:41:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/27645\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T12:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T12:41:06","slug":"ottawa-home-was-built-from-bits-of-a-former-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/27645\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa home was built from bits of a former church"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

53 Scrivens St., Ottawa<\/p>\n

Asking price: $1,495,000<\/p>\n

Lot size: 52 by 66 feet<\/p>\n

Annual Property Taxes: $9,409.26<\/p>\n

Listing agents: Glen Floyd and Jacob Floyd, Re\/Max Hallmark Realty Group<\/p>\n

The Backstory <\/p>\n

There\u2019s an old tautology that says \u201cwhen you know, you know,\u201d and as logically unsatisfying as that may seem, sometimes it perfectly describes a moment of connection.<\/p>\n

It took only two days for Michael Brownell to own the home he has now lived in for almost 24 years. He was riding his bicycle along the Ottawa River when he first saw the interesting-looking house on Scrivens Street with a \u201cFor Sale\u201d sign. <\/p>\n

He and his wife were in the middle of a house-hunt, having sold a semirural home to get closer to downtown, where he worked in international development. He had seen many homes on his regular bike commute along the Trans Canada Trail, which snakes along the river. But this home\u2019s proximity to the water was something he recognized as rare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere aren\u2019t that many homes along the river,\u201d he said, noting that while Ottawa has two rivers and a canal, a lot of the land next to the water is either parkland or used for highways. The section where he saw his future house is some of the last waterfront land with private homes before the Kichi Z\u012bb\u012b M\u012bkan (formerly known as the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway) takes up much of the riverbank all the way to Parliament Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe river here is called Lac Desch\u00eanes<\/a>; it is very wide, much more like a lake,\u201d he said. Indeed, the home is midway between two yacht clubs: nearby Britannia Bay\u2019s yacht club and the Nepean Sailing Club.<\/p>\n

On the spot, he arranged to get into a showing. After seeing the inside, he immediately made an offer.<\/p>\n

The House Today<\/p>\n

Part of the reason the decision was both quick and easy for Mr. Brownell is that this house has some features you don\u2019t often find in the Ottawa area.<\/p>\n

The first thing you\u2019ll notice is that it\u2019s tall, at three storeys. It stands at the end of a cul-de-sac that stops at the riverfront park system, just a short walk from Britannia Beach. There are lots of windows to maximize park and water views, though not a lot of yard. It was built as an infill project on a severed piece of the next-door lot. Mr. Brownell never knew the original builder, but neighbours say the home was the passion project of a local contractor who built it for his own use in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

Inside, you can see that this was no builder flip. Unlike many homes, the ground level is where the first two of the home\u2019s three bedrooms are found. The primary bedroom has its own ensuite and walk-in closet, and there\u2019s a guest bedroom, currently set up as an office, with a powder room next to the stairs to the second level.<\/p>\n

The doors are notable: Those for the bedrooms and some closets are antique double doors, made of solid oak, with frosted-glass or mirrors in the upper window panes. And the newel post and railings on the staircase off the foyer are the same dark-stained oak and are definitely of a vintage not manufactured in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The source of these heritage elements is said to be St. Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church on Parliament Hill \u2013 rebuilt in 1872 across the street from what would become the Supreme Court of Canada and the Bank of Canada buildings. The story goes the builder rescued these elements for himself when the church underwent a major renovation in the late 1980s, which replaced the congregation\u2019s school with a new office building.<\/p>\n

There are 12 vintage doors in the house that are also said to be rescues from St. Andrew\u2019s. Further evidence for the story is found in the stairwell: It\u2019s a central well that travels from the ground floor to the third floor with railings made out of a series of cast-iron grills common to the late-19th century. As Mr. Brownell tells it, this house was literally built around the idea of showing off these decorative iron pieces.<\/p>\n

Whatever the motivation, the staircase is a masterpiece of craftsmanship with the rich stain on the oak stairs and second-level hardwood flooring matching the vintage railings and contrasting with the off-white painted ironwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who visits loves the house,\u201d said Mr. Brownell. \u201cIt just grabs people with its drama and its finishings and its light.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second level is the main living space designed for both privacy and views. Ten-foot ceilings and nine-foot windows line the wall facing the river, with more richly stained wood for the window mullions.<\/p>\n

There are glass double doors for the small office\/bedroom beside the kitchen. One of the major projects Mr. Brownell undertook in recent years was to update the kitchen to create a more open, contemporary feel. He kept the rich brown wood stain found all over the house on the lower cabinets, but the uppers are white and make the relatively small room a little more airy. A three-season sunroom (which juts out above the front door) provides a little indoor-outdoor space off the kitchen and dining room.<\/p>\n

Ironwork<\/p>\n

The third level is a library arranged around the square well cut out of the centre of the room, with more of the ironwork railings topped with prayer shelves. In a church, these angled bookshelves are found on pews and typically hold hymnals or books of prayer that can be referenced during services. <\/p>\n

The room is built into the gables of the roofline, and the only windows in the space are in a reading nook that faces the river.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time you get to that third floor, it\u2019s really quite high, it feels sort of like a tree house up there,\u201d said Mr. Brownell. \u201cThis time of year is the champion time for sunsets; it sets directly over the river.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: 53 Scrivens St., Ottawa Asking price: $1,495,000 Lot size: 52 by 66 feet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[904,13151,483,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-27645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-aud-url","9":"tag-homeoftheweek","10":"tag-nodelphi","11":"tag-ottawa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}