The Bell building at 225 Montreal Road (click to enlarge)
In our final post during Architecture Week, we look to one last building on Montreal Road – this one having been constructed in the mid-20th century and still standing today. The late 1940s and 1950s were years of significant growth for Vanier (then Eastview). Bus service was improved, Montreal Road was widened, a modern new high school was constructed, and hundreds of families moved into modern apartment buildings and new homes (see also: Blake Boulevard: the 1950s housing boom revisited). To keep up with this growth, the Bell Telephone Company purchased the site of the École Ducharme in 1949 to build a “dial central office” for Ottawa East. The former school, only constructed in 1941, had burned down in March, 1949.
The Bell building, located at the corner of Montreal Road and Olmstead, was designed by Hazelgrove and Lithwick. The flat roof, clean horizontal lines and prefabricated concrete curtain wall are key traits of the International Style. The architectural firm also designed the Sir Charles Tupper Building on Riverside Drive, the Spanish Embassy on Stanley Avenue, and the (soon to be demolished) Beth Shalom congregation on Chapel Street.
Sources:
“Bell Telephone Buys New Site in Eastview.” The Ottawa Citizen. July 6, 1949. Page 23.
Benali, Kenza. Parent, Jean-François. “Vanier : bastion francophone en Ontario.” Encyclopédie du patrimoine culturel de l'Amérique française. 2007. Accessed September 25, 2012. (link)
Bergero, Claude. Index des périodiques d'architecture Canadiens, 1940-1980. Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1986.
Laporte, Luc. Vanier. Ottawa: Centre franco-ontarien de resources pédagogiques, 1983.
“Rapidly Growing Eastview; Capital’s Eastern Gateway.” The Ottawa Citizen. September 17, 1949. Page 16.
Top image by VanierNow, 2011.
