Live in Lowertown and the ByWard Market
The oldest blocks in Ottawa, laid out in 1826 and still the busiest street-level district in the city — and the one whose mornings and evenings look least alike.
Lowertown is where Ottawa started. Colonel John By laid it out east of the canal in 1826 for the labourers building it, while the officers and merchants got Uppertown on the other side; the leases here ran thirty years and could not be bought outright until the 1860s, which tells you most of what you need to know about the original social arrangement. The market square in the middle of it has been a market ever since. What has changed is everything around it. Urban renewal took roughly 1,400 households out of Lowertown East between 1962 and 1977, the Rideau Centre landed on the southern edge in 1983, and gentrification worked through Lowertown West from the 1980s onward — with the result that a neighbourhood that was 68% francophone in 1971 was 39% by 1991 and is now about a quarter French by mother tongue. Today it is two things at once: the densest four blocks of bars and restaurants in the National Capital Region, and a residential neighbourhood of about 11,000 people who live above and behind them. Whether that sounds like the best address in Ottawa or the worst depends entirely on you, and this guide tries to be honest about both.
Two hundred years of the same market, and a residential neighbourhood built around it
Lower Town runs from Rideau Street north and east to the Ottawa and Rideau rivers. The ByWard Market district within it is bounded by Sussex Drive and Mackenzie Avenue to the west, Cumberland Street to the east, Cathcart Street to the north and Rideau Street to the south. This guide covers the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study's Byward Market and Lowertown neighbourhoods together, which is how the two are lived rather than how they are mapped.
This is the oldest ground in Ottawa. Lowertown was laid out in 1826 on a cedar swamp east of the canal for the men digging it — French-Canadian timber workers and Irish Catholics — while the officers and merchants took the higher, drier ground on the other side. The class arrangement was written into the deeds: property here could only be leased for thirty years, a restriction not lifted until the 1860s. The market in the middle has operated continuously ever since, through five buildings; the current one, by Richards and Abra, opened on 1 May 1928 after fire took its predecessor.
What was done to it. Two twentieth-century decisions still shape the neighbourhood. From 1962 to 1977 the National Capital Commission expropriated its way through Lowertown East in the name of urban renewal, moving roughly 1,400 families and replacing their houses with community housing; the Macdonald–Cartier Bridge opened in 1965 and King Edward Avenue was widened to feed it, which is why an inter-provincial truck route runs down the middle of a residential street to this day. Then the Rideau Centre landed on the southern edge in 1983, values rose, and Lowertown West gentrified. A neighbourhood that was 68% francophone in 1971 was 39% by 1991.
What is inside the walk. Almost everything. The National Gallery and Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica face each other across Sussex; Major's Hill Park, the canal locks and Parliament Hill are ten to twenty minutes on foot; the Rideau Centre and Rideau station are at the bottom of the hill; Rideau Hall and its 32 hectares are at the top; and the produce stalls on George, York, ByWard and William run from April to October. It is the only neighbourhood in the city where you can do a week's shopping, see a national museum and catch a train without touching a car.
The honest version. A four-block area here holds the densest concentration of bars and nightclubs in the National Capital Region, and living above it is a genuinely different experience from visiting it. The neighbourhood has consistently ranked among the city's highest for calls for service, and a 2018 report commissioned by the community association found crimes against persons at roughly three times the city average — figures driven by the licensed density rather than by the residential streets, but real either way. There is visible homelessness and open drug use on the Rideau Street and King Edward corridors. Almost all of the ownership stock is condominium, much of it small and investor-owned. None of this makes it a bad place to live, and thousands of people choose it deliberately; it does make it a neighbourhood you should walk at 11pm on a Saturday before you sign anything.
- The block matters more than the neighbourhood: George and William are the bar core, Guigues and Murray a few streets north are quiet residential
- King Edward Avenue is an inter-provincial truck route through a residential neighbourhood — noise, vibration and air quality all follow from that
- Both the ByWard Market (1991) and Lowertown West (1994) are heritage conservation districts, which constrains what you may change on a façade
- Nearly all ownership stock is condominium; read the status certificate, the short-term-rental rules and the reserve fund
- Off-street parking is scarce and the overnight winter ban is enforced from mid-November
- Rideau station on Line 1 is under the Rideau Centre, and the airport is now reachable entirely by rail
How Lowertown got here
- 1826Colonel John By lays out Bytown in two halves on Lord Dalhousie's instructions. Lowertown, on the site of a cedar swamp between two plateaus, goes to the canal labourers — French-Canadian timber workers and Irish Catholics — on thirty-year leases they cannot convert to freehold until the 1860s.
- 1841–1846The wooden St Jacques church is moved and replaced. Notre-Dame is begun in a neoclassical design and finished in neo-Gothic after the Oblates take over the parish — which is why the doorway and the towers do not match. It becomes the cathedral of Bytown in 1847 and a minor basilica in 1879.
- 1870s–1914A long construction boom fills the neighbourhood. Ottawa is the capital, the timber trade is at its height, and Lowertown is working-class, Catholic and overwhelmingly French — with Irish, Jewish and Italian communities alongside.
- 1921–1924The Champagne Bath is built on King Edward Avenue to a Werner Ernst Noffke design and named for Mayor Napoléon Champagne — Ottawa's first municipal swimming pool, put there because most of Lowertown had no bath at home. It was salt water, and segregated by sex until 1967.
- 1926–1928James Mather's 1876 market hall burns in 1926. Richards and Abra design its replacement — the fifth building to house the market — and Mayor Ellis opens it on 1 May 1928 with 24 stalls, a basket market, a lunch room and space for 125 farmers' vehicles. It is the only surviving market building in Ottawa.
- 1962–1977Urban renewal. The National Capital Commission begins expropriating homes in Lowertown East in 1962; the Macdonald–Cartier Bridge opens in 1965 and King Edward Avenue is widened to feed it; by 1977 roughly 1,400 families have been moved out and community housing built in their place. King Edward has carried inter-provincial truck traffic through the middle of a residential neighbourhood ever since.
- 1983The Rideau Centre opens on 16 March after a bitter fight over the block it demolished. Property values on the southern edge rise, and Lowertown West begins to gentrify — a process that halves the neighbourhood's francophone share within a decade.
- 1991–1994The ByWard Market and then Lowertown West are designated heritage conservation districts, which is why the market blocks still look like themselves and the towers went up elsewhere.
- 2019Line 1 opens with Rideau station beneath the Rideau Centre, putting the market four minutes from Parliament and eleven from the airport rail link.
- 2023–2026The City stands up a ByWard Market District Authority with a nine-member board, and a public-realm plan for the market blocks moves through design — the latest of several attempts to fix a district that is simultaneously the city's biggest tourist draw and the address its residents complain about most.
Very little green inside it, and a great deal just outside
The market blocks themselves have almost no park — the courtyards east of Sussex are the closest thing, and they are hard landscape. What the neighbourhood has instead is a ring: Major's Hill Park above the canal locks, the Rideau Falls and Green Island at the north end, the grounds of Rideau Hall — 32 hectares, open to the public and free — and Beechwood Cemetery, the National Cemetery of Canada, whose 65 hectares of arboretum do more park duty than their name suggests.
The resident's angle: the trade for living here is that your outdoor space is public, national and frequently borrowed for a festival. Major's Hill Park is the city's main event site, which means amplified sound for a good part of the summer. For genuine quiet you go north to Rideau Hall or east to Beechwood, and both are worth the twenty minutes.
24 places, with real drive times
Road-adjusted distance and drive time from the centre of the community to each destination, nearest first. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 24 places, nearest first.
Method: distances and drive times are estimated from a representative point between the market square and Lowertown, using straight-line distance multiplied by a road factor and a tiered speed model — honest ranges, not routed times. Read the walk column first: everything above Beechwood Cemetery in this table is a walk, and driving several of them would take longer than walking once you have found parking.
Every gym within reach
The neighbourhood's recreation is municipal and old. Champagne Bath at 321 King Edward was built between 1921 and 1924 to a Werner Ernst Noffke design and named for Mayor Napoléon Champagne — the city's first municipal swimming pool, put here precisely because most of Lowertown had no bath at home. It still runs as a City pool and fitness centre. Lowertown Pool on St Patrick is the outdoor summer one, and Routhier on Guigues has the gymnasium and the programme space.
- Municipal pricing, and a City membership also covers Plant, McNabb and the other central facilities
- Originally salt water and segregated by sex until 1967 — the two ground-floor entrances are still there
- Lowertown Pool on St Patrick Street is outdoor, summer-only, with a diving board and free parking
- Routhier Community Centre at 172 Guigues Avenue holds the gymnasium and most of the neighbourhood's non-licensed social life
| Facility | What it is | Drive |
|---|---|---|
| Champagne Bath open | 321 King Edward Avenue, built between 1921 and 1924 to a Werner Ernst Noffke design and named for Mayor Napoléon Champagne — Ottawa's first municipal swimming pool, put there because most of Lowertown had no bath at home. Still a City pool and fitness centre, at municipal prices. | 3–5 min |
| Lowertown Pool open | An outdoor in-ground pool with a diving board on St Patrick Street, with change rooms and a sauna on site and free parking. Summer only, and the neighbourhood's default July afternoon. | 3–4 min |
| Routhier Community Centre open | The community centre at 172 Guigues Avenue in Lowertown West, with a gymnasium and the programme space for most of what happens in the neighbourhood that is not a bar. | 3–4 min |
| The Rideau Canal Skateway open | Not a gym, and for six to eight weeks a year the best exercise in the city. The northern entrance is at the Ottawa locks below the Château Laurier, ten minutes from the market square — though the 2023 season did not open for a single day, the first blank year since 1971. | 3–5 min |
The free option is the canal in winter and the river paths in summer. The northern entrance to the Rideau Canal Skateway is at the Ottawa locks below the Château Laurier, ten minutes from the market square — though the 2023 season did not open for a single day, the first blank winter since the Skateway began in 1971, and a full season can no longer be assumed.
One catchment elementary, and the French-language schools that define the area
York Street Public School on Besserer is the English catchment elementary. The neighbourhood's real school story is French: École élémentaire catholique Sainte-Anne sits in the parish that was the Irish and then French heart of Lowertown, and De La Salle on Old St Patrick Street is the CEPEO secondary whose arts-concentration programme draws students from across the region. The English catchment secondary is Lisgar, across the canal.
| School | Board | Note |
|---|---|---|
| York Street Public School | OCDSB | The catchment elementary at 555 Besserer Street, kindergarten to grade 6, with an English and an early French immersion stream. |
| École élémentaire catholique Sainte-Anne | CECCE | The French-language Catholic elementary on Old St Patrick Street, in the parish that was the neighbourhood's Irish and then French heart. |
| De La Salle | CEPEO | The French-language public secondary at 501 Old St Patrick Street, with the arts-concentration programme that draws students from across the region. |
| Lisgar Collegiate Institute | OCDSB | The English catchment secondary across the canal on Lisgar Street, founded in 1843 and the oldest still operating in Ottawa. |
| University of Ottawa | Post-secondary | Twenty minutes' walk south through Sandy Hill — the largest English-French bilingual university in the world, with about 46,000 students. |
This is not a large-family neighbourhood — the housing mix runs to one- and two-bedroom apartments — and the boards have redrawn catchments repeatedly as the downtown residential population has changed shape. Confirm the current catchment for a specific address with the school board before you buy.
Month by month, what living here looks like
Not a highlights reel — the actual annual rhythm, including the dates residents have to remember.
- The one month the market belongs to residents — the tourists are gone and the patios are boarded
- A daily mean of −10 °C and 59 cm of snow on average, and the narrow market streets are the last to be cleared
- The Skateway usually opens in the second half of the month, five minutes from the market square
- Winterlude's ice sculpture competition fills Confederation Park and the market blocks for the first three weekends
- The busiest weekends of the winter here, and the hardest time of year to park
- BeaverTails on George Street sells more in February than in July, which locals find funnier than visitors do
- The Skateway closes, usually in the first week
- The worst-looking weeks of the year: a winter of grit emerges from under the snow on streets with no front gardens to hide it
- Sugar shack season across the river in Gatineau, which is a short drive from here
- The outdoor market stands reopen on George, York, ByWard and William as the weather allows
- Patios return, and with them the neighbourhood's summer noise profile
- Freshet on the Ottawa River peaks; the 2017 and 2019 floods are the reason riverside insurance here is worth reading twice
- The Canadian Tulip Festival brings the first serious tourist volume of the year
- Doors Open Ottawa opens buildings across Lowertown, several of which are older than the country
- Major's Hill Park's festival season starts, and with it the amplified-sound calendar
- The market is at full tilt: produce stalls, buskers, and the densest concentration of patios in the region
- Ottawa Jazz Festival begins at Confederation Park, twenty minutes' walk away
- Sunset near 8:50pm, and George Street stays loud until well after it
- Canada Day puts hundreds of thousands of people between here and Parliament Hill; residents either host or leave
- The hottest month, with a July daily mean of 21.2 °C and humidex readings regularly past 35
- Peak street-noise season — the four blocks around George Street are the loudest residential address in the city
- The busiest visitor month, and the one when residents most notice they live in a destination
- The Ottawa International Buskers Festival takes over Sparks Street and spills into the market
- Humidity peaks, and the older walk-ups without air conditioning make their case against themselves
- The University of Ottawa comes back and Thursday nights change character for eight months
- The best weather of the year, and the market's produce season at its peak
- Rents in Lowertown reset upward as the student cycle turns over
- Peak market month for anyone who cooks — the stalls are at their best in the four weeks before they close
- The maples along Sussex and in Major's Hill Park turn, and the Gatineau hills across the river do it more spectacularly
- The first frost usually lands in the first half of the month
- Outdoor stalls wind down and the district contracts to its indoor half
- Remembrance Day at the National War Memorial, fifteen minutes' walk away, closes the streets around it
- Grey, damp, dark by half past four — the price of the other eleven
- Christmas Lights Across Canada lights Confederation Boulevard, which runs through the neighbourhood
- The Christmas market and the shops carry the district through the darkest weeks
- The overnight winter parking ban starts, and in a neighbourhood with very little off-street parking it is a real constraint
24 photographs of Ottawa and the region
Drawn from the site's shared, freely licensed Ottawa photo library — not photographs of Lowertown and the ByWard Market itself. Filter by category.
Showing 1–12 of 24 photographs.
About these photographs. Openly licensed images geotagged in or near Lowertown and the ByWard Market, found on Wikimedia Commons and served from there with full attribution. Inline photos elsewhere on the page may still come from the site's shared Ottawa library.