Parliament Buildings

Parliament Buildings, structures in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, that house the Canadian Parliament (the Senate and House of Commons). The buildings, which are designed in a Gothic Revival style, officially opened on June 6, 1866, about a year before Canada’s Confederation. On February 3, 1916, a fire destroyed all but the Library of Parliament. Reconstruction began later that year and was completed in 1927.

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As the seat of Canada’s federal government, the Parliament Buildings are remarkable and visually striking landmarks located on a promontory overlooking the Ottawa River. The complex is made up of three buildings: the Centre Block, which houses Parliament and adjoins the Library of Parliament and the Peace Tower; and the East and West blocks, each of which is an administrative building. The site is set within a designed landscape in the picturesque tradition. The Centre Block is centrally located at the hill’s highest point near a steep escarpment. The East and West blocks are to each side of the Centre Block and create a public plaza facing the city’s urban core. The surrounding open grounds are interspersed with monuments of important political figures.

History

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In 1857 Queen Victoria chose the small town of Ottawa for the new capital, and an area known as Barrack Hill—which was used as living quarters for the Royal Engineers working on the Rideau Canal—was chosen as the site for the federal buildings. In 1859 a competition was organized to find suitable architects for the complex. A wide variety of styles was submitted by architectural firms under pseudonyms to the Department of Public Works. The competitors’ designs were of two general historical styles: Neoclassical, which was identified at the time with American republicanism, and Gothic Revival, which was used for the recently completed British Parliament in London. After discussions between Public Works commissioners and Governor General Sir Edmund Walker Head, the picturesque Gothic Revival style was chosen because it was thought to best represent parliamentary democracy. The Centre Block was awarded to Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones in 1859 and was reworked four years later by Fuller and Charles Baillairgé. The East and West Blocks were awarded to Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver. A proposed governor general’s residence was never built. All the other buildings, however, were sufficiently complete to move government departments from Quebec to the new capital in 1865. The Parliament Buildings officially opened on June 6, 1866.

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Design

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The High Victorian Gothic Revival was the most successful of the medieval revival styles in 19th-century Canada. The Parliament Buildings’ designs developed from two streams of evolving thought on Gothic architecture. One was the influence of the English architect A.W.N. Pugin, who saw the Gothic possessing an honest aesthetic because of its functionalism, creating buildings designed for their usability rather than their style. Pugin’s ideas were widely accepted at a time when picturesque sensibilities were strong. A second influence was the notion of an authentic moral uprightness through the Gothic’s high standards of craftsmanship espoused by the British theorist John Ruskin. In Ruskin’s view, Gothic architecture’s highly ornate decorativeness allowed a freedom of expression to anonymous craftsmen who were increasingly inhibited by the Industrial Age and its modern materials. The Parliament Buildings reflect both branches of Victorian Gothic revivalism but interpreted to Canadian tastes by its eclectic choice of Gothic ornament and local materials.

Each of the Parliament Buildings was designed to incorporate Gothic elements, including pointed arches, lancet windows and tracery, spires with crockets, and rubble-course stonework. In Pugin’s tradition, a liberal and varied composition of projecting and receding masses produced the picturesque silhouettes of the buildings and the visual legibility of the plan. Ruskinian elements include the attention to minute details of ornamentation and a strong sense of polychromy, despite the replacement of the colourful slate tile of the mansard roofs with copper in later years. When English author Anthony Trollope visited the Parliament Buildings, he said: “I know no modern Gothic purer of its kind or less sullied with fictitious ornamentation.”

The only surviving intact portion of the original Centre Block, the Library of Parliament best exemplifies the High Victorian Gothic Revival. The library incorporated the most current ideas in the field and was drawn to exact specifications cited by the head librarian at the time. The original Parliament Buildings complex had a strong impact both nationally and internationally, and it established a course for federal building design over the following decades.