Sparks Street - the Commercial
and Banking Centre
Sparks Street was once the commercial
and financial centre of Ottawa. When its busy streetcar line was
removed in 1959 it began a rapid decline. The creation of an innovative
pedestrian mall in 1961, (by architect Watson Balharrie), was
an attempt to reverse this decline.
The street still has many imposing
buildings built to the new 1910 height limit by Ottawa's leading
industrialists and designed by local architects. Many Beaux-Arts
pavilions of the banks and insurance companies, mostly headquartered
in Montreal, Toronto, and New York, were designed by architects
from those places.
Today the decline continues, particularly
outside office hours, but a hoped-for infusion of mixed-use residential
space may bring a recovery. Many of the business are now tenants
to the government Department of Public Works and National Capital
Commission, which have aquired most of the properties.
Confederation Square to Metcalfe Street:
Hope Chambers
(Bible House), 61-63 Sparks Street (map 7)
W.E. Noffke, 1910 II
Canada Life Building (Saxe Building), 75 Sparks
Street (map
8)
Weeks & Keefer,
1909-10 II
Ottawa Electric Building, 56-60 Sparks Street
(map 9)
J. Albert Ewart, 1926-7
II
Imperial Bank of Canada, (former Bank of British
North America), 62 Sparks Street (map A)
unknown architect I,
1936
Blackburn Building, (Union Bank Building,
CPR), 83 Sparks Street (map
B)
W.E. Noffke, 1908, 1913 III
Metcalfe Street to O'Connor Street:
Birks Building,
101-107 Sparks Street (map
C)
Weeks & Keefer,
1910-1911 I
Richmond
Building, (Bate Building), 109-111 Sparks Street (map D)
Stent & Laver,
1859 I
Bank
of Commerce, 119-123 Sparks Street (map E)
Darling & Pearson,
1922 III
former
Bank
of Nova Scotia, (Parliamentary Information Centre and Library),
125 Sparks Street (map
F)
John M. Lyle, 1924 III
Bank of Nova Scotia,
former Murphy-Gamble
Department Store, 118 Sparks Street (map G)
C.P. Meredith, 1909 I
Home Bank. 126 Sparks Street
(map H)
unknown architect, possibly C.P.
Meredith, 1919 I
O'Connor Street to Bank Street:
Bank
of Montreal, 161 Sparks Street, see
also 144
Wellington Street (map
J)
E.I. Barott,
1929-1932 III
Booth Building, 165
Sparks Street (map
K),
J. Albert Ewart, 1910-11 II
former Sun
Life Building, 124 Sparks Street at Bank Street (map L)
E.L. Horwood, 1897 I
former
Metropolitan
Life Building, now Wellington Building, House of Commons,
180 Wellington Street, fronts on Sparks and Bank (map M)
Dan Everett Waid and J.
Albert Ewart, 1924-7 III
click here to proceed to Wellington
Street or return to the overview.