DE-RAMPING THE SKYLINE

The Skyline Hotel (Campeau Corporation, 1965-67) was big, bland and white - but impressive nonetheless. After four and half decades of heavy use, five different names and several owners, it is undergoing a makeover that will correct its most annoying feature. In order to get into the main entrance you had to walk a car ramp, or use a dark cave under the ramp's deck.

In fact, the hotel turned its back on the downtown, facing a featureless tract of parking lots that's barely developed since the hotel opened. The cigar-shaped tower sits on top of double height podium - a bit of a bunker that was set above a recessed base, further divorcing the hotel's connection from the street.

The new design (HOK Architects) will move the lobby down to the ground floor, and open the hotel to the street.

In the 1980s the porte-cochere was pimped out with some historicized detailing and heavy coffers on the underside.

The Skyline's white precast porte-cochere was revealed during the demolition.

I got there too late to photograph the scalloped fascia, which followed the profile of the beam ends, and was being loaded into a truck.

The podium's Albert Street side is to be opened up with a secondary entrance, and the ribbed concrete panels will be glazed.

The Albert Street doors originally functioned as an entrance to the convention rooms and main ballroom. In time they were covered up and just served as emergency egress doors.

The car ramp concealed two large exhaust vents that couldn't be relocated, and so the architects made a feature of them by re-incorporating them into a freestanding arch.

In the 1980s remodelling the enlarged overhang was punctured with two small skylights.

The Skyline canopy's roof twin 'beams' were hollow. Each of the 1967 precast elements was delicately removed in from the steel frame in one piece.

The Skyline was designed by Campeau's chief architect Peter Dobbing. He bevelled the edges by cutting back the three outer bays, which was a modest reference to a famous building.

New York's Pan Am Building (Emery Roth and Sons, with Walter Gropius) was clearly an inspiration. But the Pan Am's facets were equally sized.

And The Skyline didn't have the rooftop heliport, a landing pad for a Sikorsky that ferried passengers from JFK in fifteen minutes, at great expense and some danger. The service was discontinued after a series of disastrous accidents.

The hotel's makeover site plan shows its footprint to be more Pan Amish than it actually is.

There are other architectural quotations on The Skyline. The corduroy textured concrete panels are signature Paul Rudolph, and then there are those projecting beam elements.

This is a bit of a stretch, but they might be a nod the Kenzo Tange who employed frequently them as in the Kagawa Prefecture Office

Or the Yamanashi Culture Chamber. Just a thought.

The entire central portion of the Lyon Street facade is to be removed.

The steel frame has been stripped bare, and by the time of this posting the whole porte cochere has been cut away.

With it goes the car ramp.

Place de Ville required a mighty excavation. By February 1967 the hotel tower was being clad and the swimming pool's basin was under construction.

Seen from the seventh floor of Tower 'B' is the East and West Memorial Buildings' arch, and the last of the Ottawa Electric Railway's streetcar barns. Campeau had bought the two blocks from its successor, the Ottawa Transportation Commission.

In 1951 the block that was to become Place de Ville's Phase II was used to park the OTC's new fleet of electric trolley buses. This picture was taken after the East Memorial Building was complete, but before the West Memorial and arch were built.

Phase II was the scene of the last great building height battle. In 1969 Robert Campeau announced that he would build two more towers - forty-five and thirty-nine storey buildings. After a skirmish with the City of Ottawa they were reduced by a few floors, and approved. The National Capital Commission appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, winning the case and reducing the height to twenty-nine floors.

Again, the building was to be somewhat of an homage to another tall one - the Montreal Stock Exchange Tower (Pietro Luigi Nervi, 1963-67) which had a tripartite shaft separated by drum filled gaps.

The model unveiled by Campeau demonstrated the startling scale of his proposed towers, when seen against their modest brothers - Towers A and B.

In the end the project produced Tower C, and the podium building was moved to the centre of the block. Urban legand has it Campeau provided a tunnel right of way under Queen Street for a future subway line. Prescient? With the Light Rail tunnel moving to Queen Street, maybe it will come in handy..

The drum top was retained for a second hotel's revolving restaurant. There are currently approved plans for extending the podium building by a further seventeen stories.