Wallis House, Echoing the History of Lowertown

By Caroline Lavoie and Sally Kearsley

Even though we may not think of Wallis House as a part of Lowertown, since it is located at its very edge (at the corner of Rideau and Charlotte), the building has overlooked our neighbourhood for close to 150 years. It has been in turn  a hospital, a seminary, an army barracks, an emergency-housing centre for returning veterans and an armoury.

Originally built in 1873, the building served as Carleton County’s first fully equipped Protestant hospital, replacing an adjacent building dating from 1851 (now demolished), which had only ten beds and two employees,  a steward and a matron. But what need was there for a Protestant hospital in the first place?

Since 1845, the Grey Nuns under the leadership of Elisabeth Bruyère had been running a hospital (now Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital) in Bytown. However, during a severe typhus epidemic in 1847 following the arrival of Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine, there were rumours of bedside conversions by the nuns. The Ottawa Archives have an interesting exchange of letters between “gentlemen of the Protestant persuasion” and Sister Bruyère, who strongly denied these allegations.

The hospital was designed by Robert Surtees in the Queen Anne revival style. Surtees, who later became Chief Engineer for the City of Ottawa, also built the Carleton County Courthouse on Daly (now the Arts Court ) and the Byward market building. The new hospital had 75 beds and a morgue in the basement. In 1897-98, a new wing in the Tudor revival style, with half-turrets and cupolas, was added to the east side by Alexander Hutchison of Montreal. In 1899, Lady Stanley, wife of the Governor General, opened an Institute for Trained Nurses to provide staff for the hospital, on the land now occupied by the Lady Stanley Place. Medical buildings around the area included a children’s hospital on Wurtemburg (now the Turkish Embassy), a maternity hospital and isolation wards for contagious diseases on Porter’s Island.

In 1924, the Protestant hospital merged with St. Luke’s Hospital (on Elgin Street) and the Maternity Hospital to form the Ottawa Civic Hospital, now located on Carling Avenue.

Sold to the Catholic Diocese, 589 Rideau became a “minor” seminary (a non-residential school for boys) and a “major” seminary (a residential school for future priests). Hospital wards were transformed into a chapel, classrooms and dormitories. What irony that a hospital built to counter the influence of the Catholic Church ended up in its hands half a century later!

In 1943, the building was sold to the Department of National Defence, who turned it into barracks for the members of the Women Royal Navy unit (WRENs). The heavy Canadian casualties at Dieppe in August 1942 led many women to want to contribute to the war effort, and the Army, Air Force and Navy setup women’s units. The WRENs served as truck drivers, photographers, clerks and a wide range of other jobs “to free men for active service”.

Wallis House was named after Provo Wallis, an 1812 hero from Nova Scotia, who lived to be 100 years old. After the war, the building was briefly squatted in by returning veterans who could not find affordable housing. It was subsequently requisitioned as transitional residence for military families, then as a Korean War recruitment centre, barracks for the Canadian Guards during their first years in Ottawa, and from 1965 onward, an armoury and cadet corps facility for various units, who in 1990 moved to theMajor E.J.G Holland VC Armoury on Walkley Road.

City By-Law 221-90 was passed in September 1990, designating Wallis House a heritage building, one of only two designated buildings on Rideau past King Edward (the other being the OPL Rideau Branch). Public Works caved in to pressure from various developers with very little appreciation of our  heritage and ordered the building demolished in 1994. Thankfully, heritage status, mobilization of the community and advocacy work of Heritage Ottawa and others, along with a purchase offer from Sandy Smallwood of Andrex Holdings, helped save the Wallis House. Today, with 46 condo units, the Wallis House, with its beautiful 1873 crest featuring the English rose, the Scottish thistle and the Irish shamrock alongside the Canadian maple leaf, continues to echo the history of Lowertown.

In memory of Joan Kennedy, Wallis House Heritage Committee Member