The Architecture of Ottawa's Central Union Station

by David L. Jeanes*

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The Government Conference Centre, formerly Union Station, was designed in May 1908 by Ross & MacFarlane, a three-year old partnership of young Montreal architects. Their beaux-arts concept impressed city council and

Drawing in inital proposal

1909 Archtectural Drawing (Click images to enlarge)

  newspaper reporters as "strikingly beautiful" and "so completely different" from the rejected Gothic designs of New York architect Bradford Lee Gilbert. A central union station, planned since 1891 but delayed many times, had become a personal project of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Ottawa Mayor D'Arcy Scott and Grand Trunk Railway President Charles Melville Hays.

By 1909 George Allen Ross and David Huron MacFarlane assembled their team for the station. Designer Louis-Joseph Théophile Décary and the firm's chief draftsman Robert Henry MacDonald led 30 architects, engineers and draftsmen, almost all Canadians, who had apprenticed to leading Montreal architects, studied at Bishop's, McGill, the École Polytechnique, M.I.T. in Boston, or the École des beaux-arts in Paris, and worked for leading beaux-arts architects in Boston, New York or Montreal.

Grand Trunk Union Station 1912 (Click image to enlarge)

The Indiana limestone walls and Doric columns "in antis", facing Rideau Street and the canal, hid a modern steel frame designed by civil engineer Gilbert Townsend. He had trained at M.I.T. and worked for the engineers of New York's new skyscrapers and for the leading American and Canadian bridge companies. Bridge trusses hidden in the waiting room and concourse roofs supported false plaster ceilings and stone capitals above false columns. The building plan and great waiting room copied McKim, Mead & White's Pennsylvania Station, then under construction in New York. The barrel and groin vaulted ceiling, arched

Ottawa and NYC Waiting Rooms (Click images)

"thermal" windows, hollow Corinthian columns, and Roman travertine walls formed a half-scale replica of the New York waiting room. It was an enlarged re-creation of the "frigidarium" of the Roman baths of Diocletian, preserved as Michelangelo's church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Around the waiting room were separate rooms for men and women, restaurant, ticket office, and a finely appointed Government room with marble fireplace and mantelpiece. They were entered though the spacious foyer and grand staircase, a tunnel from the Chateau Laurier, and the platform concourse from Besserer Street. A 580 foot train shed, the latest design of American railroad engineer Lincoln Bush, sheltered platforms and tracks along the Canal.

Beaux-arts stations were also designed in 1904 and 1908 for Winnipeg by other architects, but Ottawa's project enabled Ross, Macdonald and Townsend to create the largest architectural and engineering firm in Canada, building monumental landmarks across the country. Members of the Union Station team lead the design of Toronto's great Union Station (1913-1920). Ottawa's station and Chateau Laurier opened 90 years ago on 1 June 1912 and served Canada's transcontinental railways until July 1966. After the trains left, it became the 1967 Centennial Centre and later the Government Conference Centre.

Union Station & Bush Shed 1956 (Click image to enlarge)

The firm designed Toronto's Arena Gardens, the first 20-storey skyscraper in Canada, Central Technical School, the Royal York Hotel, Eatons and Maple Leaf Gardens; Winnipeg, Regina and Edmonton's Fort Garry, Saskatchewan and MacDonald hotels; Quebec City's Price building; Montreal's many office blocks, department stores, university buildings, hotels and apartments; the Halifax reconstruction after the 1917 explosion; and Ottawa's 1913 Daly building expansion, 1941 Lord Elgin Hotel, and postwar buildings at Tunney's Pasture and Rockcliffe air base.

Other Union Station architects went on to varied careers. Décary worked with Thomas Lamb and John Eberson to design and build the largest movie palaces and arenas across Canada, in New York and in Paris. Harry Royden Dowswell collaborated on the Empire State Building. Thomas Dunlop Rankin and Gustave Brault joined Public Works, becoming assistant chief and chief architects, and directed the Confederation and Justice buildings and the conversion of 24 Sussex Drive as the Prime Minister's residence. Harold Lea Fetherstonhaugh designed important Montreal buildings and John Duncan Forsyth created mansions and monuments in Oklahoma.

Union Station Pre-1955 (Click image to enlarge)

The original Roman-style dome was removed in 1956 from above the wood-panelled courtroom of the Board of Railway Commissioners, which occupied the upper floors on Rideau Street for 55 years. The blank northeast wall never received its columns as anticipated by the architects. Yet Union Station remains, inside and out, one of the most beautiful buildings in Ottawa. The proposal for a national history museum dedicated to the prime ministers, many connected with Union Station, the Centennial Centre or the Conference Centre, is a wonderful idea.

* David Jeanes is a long-time resident of Ottawa, an amateur historian, and a new board member of Heritage Ottawa. For the past 20 years he has studied the railway and architectural history of the old Union Station and of other Ottawa train stations. He recently retired from Nortel Networks and a 32-year career in computer and telecom R&D and is currently president of Transport 2000, a national voluntary group advocating public transportation.

The sources for this paper include the Ross & Macdonald archives at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and McGill's Canadian Architecture Collection in Montreal, nomination forms in the Royal Institute of British Architects library, periodicals such as Construction, Canadian Railway and Marine World, Contract Record and Architectural Record, Parks Canada/FHBRO agenda papers, and two recent theses, by David Rose at Concordia and Jacques Lachapelle at Laval, respectively on Ross & MacFarlane/Macdonald's hotel and monumental architecture.

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