East Side Survey
The residential area known as the East Side in the City of Ottawa was among the city’s premier neighborhoods in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Because of its initial isolation to Ottawa’s central business and commercial district west of the Fox River, the East Side became a prime location for the city’s early professional class, who built gracious homes on large lots, many overlooking the Fox River. The East Side survey area is located on a peninsula bordered on the north and west by the Fox River to the Illinois River on the south.
West Side Streetcar Survey, Ottawa and Illinois Avenue
The Ottawa West Side Streetcar survey area is a neighborhood that has its roots in the city’s earliest years of development. Its proximity to the central business district, and to the industrial areas surrounding the Lateral Canal and Hydraulic Basin, made it a popular area for businessmen and professionals, as well as the city’s laborers and tradesmen. The expansive lots along Ottawa Avenue, especially along the boulevard within the Ottawa City Subdivision, were ideal locations for the impressive Italianate and Queen Anne mansions built in the mid-to-late-19th century, while Illinois Avenue, which featured smaller lots, attracted modest vernacular residences built from the 1850s through the 1950s. The intensive field survey consisted of 232 properties along Illinois and Ottawa avenues in the city’s west side.