Close Call: The SELTZER BUILDING

Enough of old buildings. Here is some recent architectural history. Apologies for the number of Wikipages, just trying to fluff my links.

Remember the Eighties? ...the pink marbles, the broken pediments, teal blue, and Palladian windows. Post-Modernism had reached its wretched excesses in 1987 when Ottawa Mayor Jim Durrell invited the Seltzer Organization of Philadelphia, PA to come to the city with this Sparks Street office building project.

The Sparks Street elevation was stepped back to accommodate the Mall's 'right-to-light' zoning, but on Queen Street the Seltzer Building would rise up like the proverbial Chippendale highboy in homage to Philip Johnson's AT&T (now SONY) Building. Both sides of Seltzer displayed street-level arcading and a bowed-out midsection.

Zoning difficulties delayed the project for a decade, and in 1997 the existing buildings on the site (a 1940s art-moderne Woolworths and a 1920s Kresge) were cleared away.

Its later version (WZMH Partnership) was less frothy, but there was still a problem with the Sparks Street frontage - the developer was unable to acquire the three little stores shown as a white box to the right of the base. Eventually the project fell through and the cleared land functioned as a surface parking lot for five years.

Pink stone Po-Mo had been used earlier on the Heritage Place, a 1987 building that actually got built. By the time the son-of Seltzer got underway next door in 2002 (Morguard's Radio-Canada CBC Broadcast Centre) designed by DCYSA Architects the Sparks Street side had morphed into plain brick pseudo-Main Street. With the missing properties now added in, it was a very long facade.

Post-Modernism decreed that buildings must have a bottom, middle, and a top. WZMH (Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden Partnership) included a gently protruding glass belly.

This was resurrected on the final iteration's Queen Street side by architects DCYSA (Desmarais, Cousineau, Yaghjian, St-Jean et Associes).

The highboy chest had transformed into something resembling a 1940s radio console. Sections of beige pre-cast and applied orange strapwork replaced the busy pink marble.

At grade on Sparks Street the first Seltzer Building carried the curved wall all the way to the ground, screened by pink arcading. The former Serlian rounded arch defining the entry atrium was converted to a pointed arch on the second Seltzer.

The historicizing detail (Julia Oberlander, Architecural History Consultant) on Zellers was not entirely gratuitous - it was likely based on one of Sparks Street's long lost Romanesque Revival department stores.

But there were no local references for its aborted neighbour - just some cheezy corporate gee-gaws on a building type that was long past its best by date.

I remember sitting on a community consultation panel with this building's architects who declared their design to be sympathetic and contextual. The monotonous repetition and the lack of street level animation (the CBC had promised to open the windows and provide interactive programming onto the Mall) has proved otherwise.

But on balance, it's probably a good thing that this is the one that got away.

Although not entirely. Po-Mo didn't leave major marks on the central area. Apart from Alistair Ross's Barrister House (1982) at 180 Elgin St. and the Perez Corp's blue glass condo on George St., I can't think of many other significant examples. Of course the surburban office parks are dotted with them. Any favourites, or least favourites?