HORSE POWER.

URBSite has been a little intermittent of late, but there are posts in the gate for 2012. To close out this year here's a nostalgic love letter to our hoofed friends. Above: the grey gelding and open delivery sleigh of the Slinn and Sholdis Bakery.

A cab fitted with snugly bearskin robes stood waiting at the stand on Wellington and Elgin Streets, outside the gate to the East Block.

There was a less ornamental cab stand at Sussex and George just beside the public fountain-horse trough. These muddy roads must have offered some resistance to the sleighs.

When winter finally passed the fleet converted from steel runners to wheels. Hitching posts were interspersed between the young street trees.

There was a hay market operating in front of the ByWard Market (the second one, built 1876 and demolished 1926 - James Mather, Architect).

On Sparks Street the snow was removed by hand and loaded onto the Ottawa Electric Railway's wagons. The is the Metcalfe-to-O'Connor block looking east.

The same block, south side; it looks like cold, wet work.

J. Templeton's Centre Town Livery, Hack and Sales Stables were located on Albert Street east of Bank. This is the Ottawa Diary Co.'s grey mare and sleigh No. 15.

The stable leased Victorias, Broughams, Landaus, Tally-Ho Coaches &c, &c. There were a lot of horse drawn vehicles on the streets as late as 1910.

This photo is about fifty years earlier. T.W. Chisnall's Livery, Buses and Cabs was at 68 Queen Street, just west of Elgin. Tally Ho! and Happy Holidays.

HO-HUM HERITAGE, BY THE BOOK

OK, it was actually a Book Market ('World's Largest Bookstore') - the last commercial tenant in this late nineteenth century block on Dalhousie Street. The building had received a radical makeover ca. 1950 when the middle floor was refaced with jade green glass tiles.

Ta-da! ...almost a year later spent mostly under netting, the property is still for lease. What emerged from behind the scaffolding was a pale (literally) imitation of the pre-modernized facade. A sincere effort, but was this absolutely necessary, and did they actually lose more than they gained?

Relatively speaking brick commercial Italianates are still commonplace. The mid-century modernes are disappearing fast. Around the corner the last remnants of Joe Feller's jazzy menswear store on Rideau Street are about to go. Removing the large Book Market sign had damaged the glass tiles but their lurid green had been undimmed by the passing decades.

Once the tiles were off it was easy to see how the earlier reno had been done. The two central windows had been shorn of their hooded lintels and blocked up using bricks recovered from the demolition.

The two square plate glass windows were popped in and shimmed up with some fairly flimsy framing.

Despite these major interventions, and the removal of the entire storefront beneath, the old brick facade had been holding up without any visible settlement.

The scaffold and nets came down briefly after the front wall demolition, to reveal robust timber floor joists - no sagging after 120 years.

And back up again for the application of the new/old facade.

Gone is the quirky window spacing, brick corbelling, authentic two-over two wood sashes, and fifty percent of the cornice detail - although it was inserted between the original end brackets.

The most damaged elements, the storefront entrance and display windows have yet to be touched, likely awaiting the needs of a prospective tenant's fit-up.

TEMPORARILY SPEAKING

Like battleships and bombers, Ottawa's Temporary Buildings were a product of the national mobilization that followed the outbreak of World War II. Although the government had commandeered privately-owned buildings all over the city, new offices for the tens of thousands of military and civilian personnel were needed immediately. This was Ottawa's original temporary, a prototype imaginatively named 'No. 1' and the first of four built on Wellington Street between Bay and Lyon.

A fifth smaller temporary was put up east of the Supreme Court. This building never got into the official numbering system, but most recently it became known as the Justice Annex . It is the last temporary building. After sitting vacant for many years PWGSC has confirmed that the only surviving tempo is to be demolished. In 1988 the Federal Heritage Building Review Office classified it because of its national significance. (Photo: Centretowner)

The Temporary Buildings are often described as 'hastily' built. This is the state of the foundations of Temporary No. 1 on November 13, 1939 - only 25 days before the building was ready for occupancy.

They were built almost entirely of wood. The heavy timber frames were studded out with large lumber and covered with diagonal board sheathing for additional strength. Wood panels formed the interior walls (no insulation). Most of the temporaries had interior courts for better light and air circulation.

The first set of temporaries was built on the land between Wellington Street and the Ottawa River that the Government of Canada had expropriated in 1912 for a never realized (another World War had intervened) complex of federal buildings. Apart from the Confederation and Justice Buildings, and the incomplete Supreme Court which was halted by WWII, this tract of derelict houses and vacant lots had been standing empty for almost thirty years. The area was still littered with the ruins of Uppertown mansions, like this wrought iron fence. Since they were situated on top of the Cliff Street Heating Plant, pipes for the heating systems were brought up through the roof of the central boiler house to service the temporaries.

The varnish on Temporary No. 1's floors was drying on December 9, 1939, three months after war had been declared.

Temporaries Nos. 2, 3 and 4 (under construction above) were added during 1940-41. The design is credited to architect T.P. Rankin of the Department of Public Works.

As it turned out Temporary Building No. 1 was the first one to be demolished, in 1960-61.

Its site was used for the National Library of Canada and Public Archives of Canada Building (1965-67).

Temporaries Nos. 2, 3 and 4 stood for another 10 years. This aerial view also shows the excavation for the East Memorial Building underway in 1949.

Since their demolition the land has been used for surface parking, and a temporary parkette along Wellington - the location of the Carlos Ott's thrice-aborted Federal Court of Canada.

After WWII the temporaries became a fixture of Ottawa's civil service life. The size of the workforce never shrank back to its pre-war levels, and they were still needed - infamously uncomfortable to work in during extremes of heat or cold, although the awnings might have been a post-war refinement. This is a city traffic survey being conducted in 1954 in front of Temporary No. 3.

The rest of the Wellington Street temporaries was removed in the early 1970s.

The Department of National Defence's temporaries on Cartier Square ('A', 'B' and 'C') were not demolished until 1980. There were other major complexes at Dow's Lake - Temporaries Nos. 5 and 6, and between Sussex and Mackenzie.

BIBLE CHURCH WALL RESURRECTED

The Central at Bank and Gladstone (CORE Architects) is a modernist reinterpretation of the classic H-shaped apartment house.

Preserving of the front wall of the 1931 Metropolitan Bible Church was a condition of development.

After a few months in storage and more months under wraps as restoration work proceeded, it's been uncovered.

As the church was demolished its 1930s building technology was revealed - cindercrete walls and hot-riveted steel beams. The condo developers had intended to brace the old wall in place during construction, but safety concerns about its proximity to the excavation meant that it had to be partially dismantled, detatched, moved away and then reattached.

The mortar joints in the upper third of the wall had failed and it was unstable. These bricks had to be removed before the wall could be packed up in a steel sandwich and hoisted away.

It was temporarily placed down into the excavation and moved back into place once the new frame had reached the second floor.

As this big beam was being torn out during the demolition a notation in yellow paint was uncovered - 'THIS SIDE FACES BANK St'.

The canopy which enjoys non-conforming encroachment rights to hang out over the Bank Street sidewalk is to be re-instated as well.

The metal belt course over the third floor windows and the flashing on top of the parapet wall was faithfully reproduced.

Some of the ribbon brick from the Bible Church's 1961 addition was harvested for the old wall's reconstruction.

A tablet at the roofline and half-moon reliefs above the windows are yet to be returned. The restoration included two vents.

Facadism is usually decried by heritage preservation purists - way down the list of desirable strategies. It's true that most historic buildings lose some meaning when moved. Many have questioned the value this elaborate rescue of a middling building.

Was it worth the effort? An anonymous building has been remounted as a little brick nugget in a new metal setting. Both buildings look a little better for this architectural marriage.

MORE SPARKS STREET Then & Now

Here are some Sparks Street then-and-now quickies.

The middle of three Romanesque Revival buildings on Sparks between Bank and O'Connor was hastily converted into a Nickelodeon movie theatre. In fact I think that this was 'The Nickle' The owners simply tore off the storefront, added some bracing and built a box office in behind.

In the 1920s it was remodelled in black glass tiles and chrome trim as Dover's Sporting Goods and Hardware. A 1990s restoration by PWGSC re-instated an historic-looking shop front.

Lindsay's Furniture store at 187 Sparks Street was home of the bargain three-piece suite and layaways. It was evicted in 1960 when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company announced that the three buildings would be needed for their head office's expansion.

When the size of the Met Life addition was scaled back, the buildings were spared and eventually restored by Public Works. It appears to be kept empty as swing space for the huge Met Life/Wellington Building's gut rehab happening next door.

The Centre (later the Mall) Theatre had a narrow storefront entrance on Sparks. A ramp took you to the auditorium, which reached through to Queen. This is one of the 1967 permanent Mall fountains. For a brief period in the 170s the Murphy Gamble Department store operated as a small Simpsons.

The facade of the commercial row (known as the Sims Building for the furrier who did business here) awaits a restaurant as part of the ReHotel project.

I recycle this shot a lot, but it's a usefully encyclopedic mid-block mid-century view of Sparks Street.

Sandwiched between the Ottawa Hydro Electric Building and the Royal Bank/90 Sparks Street/D'Arcy McGee Building is the Imperial Bank of Canada (1936, possibly Darling and Pearson), an art moderne building clad in a warm honey-coloured stone. Anyone know what kind it is?

It was merged with the Canadian Bank of Commerce in the early 1960s to become a CIBC branch, but closed shortly after that. It has finally found a new use as a stamp store and its restrained 1930s interior can once again be visited.

Next door was a row of commercial Italianate buildings from the 1870s and 80s. The second floor bay window above Laura Secord and Read's was added much later.

66 Sparks Street had been built for John Murphy & Co. Dry Goods.

To the west was the Ahearn and Soper Building. They were the founders of the Ottawa Electric Railway Company, and were the first store to market electric stoves in Ottawa.

The buildings were eventually incorporated into R. Devlin's, a fancy goods department store. At the corner of Sparks and Metcalfe, the Hotel Windsor was a holdover from Sparks Streets' Confederation era stone buildings.

It was demolished in the summer of 1960 (the year of the first temporary Sparks Street mall)for a new Royal Bank of Canada main branch, an opulently finished modernist building that lasted barely 20 years.