Nancy Miller Chenier
The Friel Towers at 200 and 201 Friel Street located between Rideau Street and Beausoleil Drive were completed in 1975 and immediately garnered both positive and negative attention. Considered by some to be excellent examples of what is called “brutalist” architecture, a term derived from the French “béton brut” or “raw concrete,” their style has a predominance of exposed concrete construction intended to communicate strength and functionality. Many others saw the style as simply cold piles of concrete projecting an impression of oppressive institutionalism.
The two towers take their name from the street that commemorates Henry J Friel, a newspaper editor and businessman, who grew up in Lowertown. After the 1849 Stony Monday riots at the Byward Market, Friel was arrested for allegedly supplying weapons to the Reform side. However by 1854 he was elected for his first term as mayor, a year when council successfully gained both city status and a new name for Bytown. A politician from an early age, he supported many progressive changes in the city and died in 1869 during his fourth term as mayor.
The Friel Towers are a complex design by Ottawa-based architects Craig and Kohler. Arranged as stacked two-storey apartments with five storeys in 200 Friel and six storeys in 201 Friel, this joint venture of the City of Ottawa and the now-defunct Ontario Housing Corporation was intended to replace housing destroyed during urban renewal. They are currently managed by Ottawa Community Housing and provide 155 homes with a mixture of one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments.