Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel
1 Rideau Street, at the Canal (map
3)
Ross &
MacFarlane, designer D.M.
Gordon
1908-1912 II
- element of Confederation Square National Historic Site
- National Historic Site (in its own right)
- built by Grand Trunk Railway
- complement to union
Station, with tunnel link under street
- initial design and site conceived by B.L.
Gilbert
- final design by Ross
& MacFarlane
- two symmetrical pavilions facing Rideau Street and Canal
- joined by circular stair tower housing water tank
- French Renaissance/Scottish Baronial decoration
- initiated the later Canadian "Chateau Style"
- predecessors were Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, Hotel Viger
in Montreal, and Empress Hotel in Victoria
- also inspired by CPR railway stations by Edward
Maxwell, including Broad Street in Ottawa (now demolished)
- austere "modern" below 5th floor
- steel frame construction by Dominion Bridge
- tallest steel frame building in Ottawa, when built (14 storeys
including attics)
- civil engineer Gilbert
Townsend
- Indiana limestone exterior
- addition in similar style drawn by Edward
Bennett (1915) and designed by John S. Archibald (1927)
- porte cochere designed by Arthur Cantin, who formerly worked
for Edward Maxwell, Cass Gilbert and Daniel Burnham
- decorated machicolation rosettes by Herbert Raine, who formerly
worked with Sir Aston Webb in London
- Exterior elevations by John
Duncan Forsyth, trained at Ecole des Beaux-Arts and associate
of John Russell Pope, last great Beaux-Arts architect in the
uS
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