St. Elijah's Housing

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St. Elijah's Housing is a former church in Ottawa that is today housing. The site at Lyon and Maclaren in the northwest of Centretown was originally home to a Pentecostal congregation. In 1929 it was purchased by Antiochian Orthodox Lebanese immigrants who established the St. Elijah Antiochian Orthodox Church. The original building was destroyed in a fire in 1949 and the current Byzantine structure was erected to replace it. 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 to a partnership of the local Anglican Diocese and the Centretown Citizens (Ottawa) Corporation. In the Anglican half of the structure are twenty apartments for homeless women. In the CCOC portion there are another twenty bachelor apartments. The conversion of the church into apartments while preserving its character was much praised.