Francis Sullivan House

Address: 346 Somerset Street East

Construction date: 1913

Francis Conroy Sullivan was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1882. When he was 18, he moved to Ottawa to work as a draftsman in the offices of Moses Chamberlain Edey. Edey was a prominent Ottawa architect who designed the Aberdeen Pavilion at Lansdowne Park and Ottawa’s first department store, the Daly Building, which was also one of the few Chicago-style buildings in Canada.

While working with Edey, Sullivan met American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Sharing a like-minded design sense, Sullivan soon moved to Chicago to work for several months with Wright at his Oak Park Studio.

Sullivan returned to Ottawa in 1911 and opened his own independent architecture practice. His firm in Ottawa created some of this city’s only examples of Prairie Style architecture. Sullivan worked in Ottawa for five very productive years between 1911 and 1916, producing significant Ottawa area structures.

In 1913, with his business booming, Sullivan built his own unique home in Sandy Hill. Sullivan used his trademark Prairie Style, using a strong vertical aesthetic.