St. Elijah's Housing is a former church in Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 that is today housing

House

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...

. The site at Lyon and Maclaren in the northwest of Centretown

Centretown

Centretown is a neighbourhood in Ottawa, Canada defined by the city as "the area bounded on the north by Gloucester Street and Lisgar Street, on the east by the Rideau Canal, on the south by the Queensway Freeway and on the west by Bronson Avenue." Traditionally it was all of Ottawa west of the...

 was originally home to a Pentecostal

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...

 congregation. In 1929 it was purchased by Antiochian Orthodox

Antiochian Orthodox Church

The Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, also known as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East and the Antiochian Orthodox Church , is an autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church within the wider communion of Orthodox Christianity...

 Lebanese

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

 immigrants

Immigration to Canada

Immigration to Canada is the process by which people migrate to Canada to reside permanently in the country. The majority of these individuals become Canadian citizens. After 1947, domestic immigration law and policy went through major changes, most notably with the Immigration Act, 1976, and the...

 who established the St. Elijah Antiochian Orthodox Church

St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral

St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral is an Antiochian Orthodox cathedral in Ottawa, Canada. It is located on Riverside Drive just east of the Mooney's Bay, south of the Hog's Back Falls. The pastor of the Cathedral is the Very Reverend Father Ghattas Hajal. It is located on 2975 Riverside,...

. The original building was destroyed in a fire in 1949 and the current Byzantine

Byzantine architecture

Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire. The empire gradually emerged as a distinct artistic and cultural entity from what is today referred to as the Roman Empire after AD 330, when the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east from Rome to...

 structure was erected to replace it. With the Lebanese Civil War

Lebanese Civil War

The Lebanese Civil War was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon. The war lasted from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in an estimated 150,000 to 230,000 civilian fatalities. Another one million people were wounded, and today approximately 350,000 people remain displaced. There was also a mass exodus of...

 Ottawa saw an influx of Antiochian Orthodox immigrants. The congregation thus decided to move to a larger structure on Riverside Drive

Riverside Drive (Ottawa)

Riverside Drive is a major road in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada that follows along the eastern bank of the Rideau River. From its northern terminus at the Transitway/Via Rail underpass just south of the Queensway, the road proceeds south to Limebank Road where it continues as River Road until the city...

. The building was sold to a partnership of the local Anglican Diocese

Anglican Church of Canada

The Anglican Church of Canada is the Province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French name is l'Église Anglicane du Canada. The ACC is the third largest church in Canada after the Roman Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada, consisting of 800,000 registered members...

 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 apartment

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

s while preserving its character was much praised.