Comfort Stations

Contemporary concerns about safety and sanitation have made the public convenience a rare avis in today's cities. Most of the examples in this post have been walled up and closed. This post isn't about not finding a place to go, most just happen to be sealed. It's a survey of 100 years of a small building type.

Garden of The Provinces
Cut into the retaining walls below Christ Church Cathedral is one of Ottawa's most conspicuous pubic bathrooms - where a pair of arches echoes the one above. Their closure is fairly recent. The rest of The Garden of The Provinces (and Territories) is uncompromisingly modern. National Capital Commission, Don Graham, Chief Landscape Architect.
Down the hill from the pointy doors is a related art installation - on the rim of the sewer gas vent pipe is a light-hearted trio of upended figures, realing from the fumes. The sculptor is Bruce Garner.

Bate Island - Champlain Bridge

The largest of the three islands in the spans of the Champlain Bridge over the Ottawa River was named for Sir Henry Newell Bate, 'Grocery King' and first Chairman of the Ottawa Improvement Commission. The two smaller islands are named for the other Commissioners - Cunningham, Mayor of Ottawa, and Riopelle, Mayor of Hull.
This isolated stone building is the public washroom that was once attached to a large restaurant on Bate Island. The restaurant (a large Colonial style roadhouse - think of one of Mildred Pierce's) was demolished, but these park style restrooms remain.
Each entrance is marked by a stepped down wall in rough stone. There were corner strip windows under a flat roof - which gave it a floating effect. Federal District Commission, Edward I. 'Ned' Woods, Chief Landscape Architect.

Lansdowne Park
There are severely modern public bathrooms contained within the enclosure of Frank Clair Stadium. They were built freestanding, but got swallowed up by the walls. The doors from the Lansdowne Park side have been covered, and the entrance porch closed off by a railing.

Just past the goal posts on the playing field side access doors flanked by glass blocks are screened by newer modesty panels. A refreshment stand from the 1950s is at the left.
The public bathroom dates from around 1960, before the new stadium was built. It's nicely detailed with exposed rafter ends and more glass blocks.

On the other side of the Civic Centre is the 1949 bronze and limestone drinking fountain presented to the Central Canada Exhibition Association in memory of Thomas Ahearn.
A bench is nestled into one side, and the spouts and basins have been replaced.
Altogether, it has been allowed to deteriorate into a derelict state - Tom was a rough-and-ready can do man who deserves better.

Strathcona Park
Two entwined circles form the restrooms at the north end of Strathcona Park. The playful building was designed by W.E. Fancott, an Ottawa architect who also designed theatre sets. Under that heavy coat of paint and stucco the figures are bright mosaic tiles.
The childhood theme related to a nearby wading pool and playground. You can still see the mosaic tile grout lines in the kids' silhouettes. The clothing dates it to the late 1950s. She's skipping to the door with purse and pigtails swinging, but this guy's really got to go.
Brewer Beach Pavilion
It's not just bathrooms, it was also a bathing house for 'Brewer Pond', a man-made lake drawn from the waters of the Rideau River just beside Bronson Bridge. The pond never really offered satisfactory swimming, but it was given a noble modernist field house, raised up on pilotis to avoid the annual flooding. The simple planes of concrete block and redwood stained siding haven't survived that well either, and today it's reaching an undignified end under garish paint.

Rockcliffe Park Pavilion
It's impossible to tell if the pavilion ever contained washrooms - perhaps on the ground level where they now sell ice cream. Visitors coped with makeshift facilities until little restrooms at the right were built - at great cost and public criticism. It's an ungainly match with the great pavilion.

Until the creation of the Ottawa Improvement Commission in 1899, there was little public access to the Ottawa River, and almost no public parkland along its shores. The Ottawa Electric Railway laid a line out to Rockcliffe Park, with distinctive pavilions and shelters for stops - and comfort stations along the route.
One the lower level of the Rockcliffe Park lookout which is just below the American Embassy ('Lornado' the home of Warren Soper, one of the OER's founders) there is a door in both side walls - the entrance to public conveniences with a spectacular setting.
Looking down over the railing to the entrance to one of the abandoned public restrooms.
Dual pathways lead down to the lower level of the lookout. They're now heavily overgrown.
The western bathroom has been sealed with concrete blocks.
The eastern bathroom must still be in use as a vault of some kind. It has a working metal door, in loading dock finish.
The door is surrounded by heavier quoins of artificial stone.
The windows are walled up too. There are actually two - but in order to get this shot I had to climb out onto a narrow ledge over the Ottawa River far below. In my discomfort I forgot to take a picture of the second window.
Ottawa Improvement Commission, Alex Stuart, Superintendent

The Astrolable - Nepean Point
The Astrolabe was built on Nepean Point in Centennial Year for viewing a son-et-lumiere show that played across the back of the Parliament Buildings. At the entrance is a ticket booth, concession stand, and public washrooms. National Capital Commission, John Leaning, Chief Architect (1967).
Its low profile is nestled into grassy berms at the foot of the slope that rises to the Champlain monument.
Strip lighting in the wooden soffits, and diamond headed glass block windows give the ribbed concrete walls some relief.

Parliament HillToday visitors to Parliament Hill are directed to washrooms in a bunker north of the West Block.

The original facilities were located in a building attached to the 1878 extension to the West Block, in a building inspired by a 15th century Italian baptistry. Art historian Harold Kalman has suggested that Chief Dominion Architect Thomas Seaton Scott was playing a form-follows-functional joke - both building types involved water.

Patterson Creek
Some of the city's best Spanish Colonial Revival buildings are in the Glebe - and they likely inspired this example. The style came to Ottawa just prior to World War I, reputedly following practitioner W. E. Knoffke's visit to Southern California. Knoffke designed many of the houses nearby, but this comfort station's architect is anonymous. The red barrel tile roofs are a key indicator.

And it's still open for business. The hastily parked bike in the first photo belonged to a gent who was exiting just prior to this shot.