National Register of Historic Places
Ottawa East Side Historic District
Ottawa, La Salle County, Illinois
The record
- Listed
- September 18, 2013
- Type
- Historic district
- Address
- Roughly between the Illinois & Fox Rivers, Shabbona & Green Sts., Ottawa
- County
- La Salle
- State
- Illinois
- Contributing resources
- 301 buildings
- Coordinates
- 41.34882, -88.83249
- Reference number
- 13000718
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
The outline is the area recorded for this listing in National Park Service map data, drawn approximately.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesUSGS Historical Topographic Map Collection
The story
Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com
The Ottawa East Side Historic District is a historic district in Ottawa, La Salle County, roughly bounded by the Illinois and Fox Rivers and Shabbona and Green Streets. It was listed in the National Register in 2013. Its 301 contributing buildings are mostly houses in styles from Late Victorian Italianate and Queen Anne to Craftsman, Bungalow, and Renaissance Revival.
Why it's listed
It was listed under criteria A and C, with local-level significance in architecture and community planning and development from 1848, when the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened, to 1940.
Physical character
Exterior walls are mostly brick, wood shingle, or stucco, with aluminum and vinyl siding added later, and roofs range from steeply pitched to low-pitched, multi-hipped forms. Individual houses carry wraparound porches, a polygonal corner tower, and a second corner tower with a bellcast roof. One house had stucco applied and its porch replaced in the 1920s; the porch was restored later, in the 1990s.
Historical context
The Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848, and the city added its first gas plant in 1856, water system in 1860, and electrical plant in 1890. An interurban railway reached the neighborhood in 1901, and a bridge over the Fox River was completed in 1904. Washington School, built in 1860, was replaced by a new elementary school in 1906, and the Armory was rebuilt in 1912-1913 and demolished in 1987.