Fleck/Patterson House | |
---|---|
Fleck/Paterson House; currently the Algerian Embassy in Ottawa. | |
![]() | |
Location | Ottawa |
Address | 500 Wilbrod Street |
Coordinates | 45°25′49″N75°40′24″W / 45.4303°N 75.6733°W |
Ambassador | Hocine Meghar |
Fleck/Paterson House is a historic building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Built in 1903 as a private residence, it has since served a number of functions, and currently serves as the Algerian Embassy to Canada since 2002.
The house was built between 1901 and 1903 by Ottawa lumber baron J.R. Booth who built it for his daughter Gertrude and her husband Andrew Fleck. It was designed by John W.H. Watts, who also designed Booth House. Gertrude Fleck lived there until her death in 1940 when it was purchased by Senator Norman Paterson who lived in it until his death in 1983. [1]
After Paterson's death, the house was bought by developers who hoped to turn it into a retirement home. These efforts fell through, however, and the house was left abandoned for a number of years. It fell victim to vandalism and water damage before being bought by local developer Robert Van Eyk in 1989 for some $1.3 million with the plan to turn it into a bed and breakfast. However, since the building was zoned only for residential purposes, the city blocked this plan. In 1992, the building was sold to Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp. for just over a million dollars. They hoped to turn the structure into a meditation centre and headquarters of the Natural Law Party of Canada. Extensive renovations, reportedly costing almost two million dollars, were undertaken and the building was fully restored. [2]
In 2002, the Maharishi Corp. sold the building for $2.95 million to Algeria. This was one of the highest prices ever paid for a house in Ottawa, and the highest price ever paid for a heritage home in the city.
Sandy Hill is a neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, located just east of downtown. The neighbourhood is bordered on the west by the Rideau Canal, and on the east by the Rideau River. To the north it stretches to Rideau Street and the Byward Market area while to the south it is bordered by the Queensway highway and Nicholas Street. The area is named for its hilliness, caused by the river, and its sandy soil, which makes it difficult to erect large buildings. It is home to a number of embassies, residences and parks. Le Cordon Bleu operates its Canadian school there, at the opposite end of Sandy Hill from the University of Ottawa.
John Rudolphus Booth was a Canadian lumber tycoon and railroad baron. He controlled logging rights for large tracts of forest land in central Ontario, and built the Canada Atlantic Railway to extract his logs and to export lumber and grain to the United States and Europe. In 1892, his lumber complex was the largest operation of its kind in the world.
Olympia & York was a major international property development firm based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The firm built major financial office complexes including Canary Wharf in London, the World Financial Center in New York City, and First Canadian Place in Toronto. It went bankrupt in the early 1990s and was recreated to eventually become Olympia & York Properties.
Booth House is a prominent heritage building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada located at 252 Metcalfe Street, just south of Somerset in Downtown Ottawa. The house was built by lumber baron John R. Booth in 1906, and it was designed by John W.H. Watts, who did a number of other Ottawa buildings.
Australia House in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada is the official residence of the Australian High Commissioner to Canada. The house is located on a corner lot at 407 Wilbrod Street in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa, near to a number of other embassies and official residences. The house was built in 1910 by William Davis, and is believed to have been designed by John W.H. Watts. Davis died under inauspicious circumstances in 1916 and it lay vacant for several years before being purchased by Colonel Cameron Macpherson Edwards, who had earlier lived at 24 Sussex Drive. The Edwards left in 1937 and rented the house to Germany to house the Consul General Dr. Erich Windels, who was friendly with Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who lived nearby. Windels was expelled from Canada upon the declaration of war in September 1939.
Place de Ville is a complex of office towers in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It consists of four office buildings: Place de Ville A, B, and C; and the 'Podium' building, which houses a shuttered "piggy-back" cinema enveloped with functional office space. The complex also has two large hotels, the Delta Ottawa City Centre and Ottawa Marriott Hotel. The buildings are linked by an underground shopping complex. Place de Ville C is the tallest office building in Ottawa. It was once advertised as "Ottawa's glittering answer to the Toronto Dominion Centre and Place Ville Marie".
The Aberdeen Pavilion is an exhibition hall in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Overlooking the Rideau Canal, it is located in Lansdowne Park, Ottawa's historic fairgrounds. For many years, the building was known as the "Cattle Castle", due to its use for the Central Canada Exhibition's agricultural exhibits and shows. It is the last surviving Canadian example of what was once a common form of Victorian exhibition hall, and was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1983.
Thomas Ahearn, PC was a Canadian inventor and businessman. Ahearn, a native of Ottawa, Canada West, was instrumental in the success of a vast streetcar system that was once in Ottawa, the Ottawa Electric Railway, and was the first chairman of Canada's Federal District Commission in 1927. He held several patents related to electrical items and headed companies which competed for decades with Ottawa Hydro as providers for electricity in Ottawa. Ahearn co-founded the Ottawa Car Company, a manufacturer of streetcars for Canadian markets.
Queen's Quay Terminal is a condominium apartment, office and retail complex in the Harbourfront neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was originally built in 1927 as a marine terminal with office, warehouse and cold-storage facilities. When shipping to Toronto declined in the 1960s and 1970s, the building was bought by the Government of Canada to be repurposed along with a section of the industrial waterfront. The Terminal Building itself was rebuilt in the 1980s with the addition of four floors of residential above the original facility, which was converted into retail and office uses. The cold storage wing was demolished and its plant building became The Power Plant gallery and Harbourfront Centre Theatre.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal is a Florida daily newspaper serving Volusia and Flagler Counties.
George Weston Limited, often referred to as Weston or Weston's, is a Canadian holding company. Founded by George Weston in 1882, the company today consists of the Choice Properties real estate investment trust and Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest supermarket retailer, in which it maintains a controlling interest. The company is majority owned by Wittington Investments, Ltd Canada, a holding company that the Weston family are the controlling share holders in. Retail brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh. The former Weston Bakeries division, which owned the brands Wonder, Country Harvest, D'Italiano, Ready Bake and Gadoua, was sold off to FGF Brands in 2022.
The Crocker-McMillin Mansion is a historic house in Mahwah, New Jersey. It was built between 1903 and 1907 on the Darling estate for businessman George Crocker. After Crocker died in 1909, the banker Emerson McMillin lived in the 75-room, three-story residence until his death in 1922. From 1927 to 1984, the mansion was occupied by a Catholic institution, the Immaculate Conception Seminary. The property, located at 675 Ramapo Valley Road in Mahwah, is one of New Jersey's historical landmarks. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
The Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway, or OA&PS, is a historic railway that operated in central and eastern Ontario, Canada, from 1897 to 1959. It was for a time the busiest railway route in Canada, carrying both timber and wood products from today's Algonquin Provincial Park areas, as well as up to 40% of the grain traffic from the Canadian west from Depot Harbour at Parry Sound through to the St. Lawrence River valley.
The architecture of Ottawa is most marked by the city's role as the national capital of Canada. This gives the city a number of monumental structures designed to represent the federal government and the nation. It also means that as a city dominated by government bureaucrats, much of its architecture tends to be formalistic and functional. However, the city is also marked by Romantic and Picturesque styles of architecture such as the Parliament Building's Gothic Revival architecture.
The Royal Connaught Hotel is a 12-storey building in downtown Hamilton, Ontario. It was built by Harry Frost of Buffalo, New York in 1914, who also started up and owned the Frost Fence Company in Hamilton. It is located at the corner of King Street East and John Street South. From 2014-2018, it was converted to condominiums.
René G. Lépine was a Canadian real estate developer and philanthropist. Lépine was the chairman of Groupe Lépine, a real estate development and investment firm he founded in 1953. He is widely considered one of the most influential French Canadian real estate developers of his time. His companies developed over $5 billion of real estate in Canada and the United States since the 1960s. He also owned a portfolio of multifamily and retail properties in Montreal and Ottawa. Lépine developed many buildings considered landmarks in Montreal, including the Olympic Village and Le Sanctuaire du Mont-Royal. Lépine is also credited with having developed the first condominiums in Montreal in 1981.
Maharishi Peace Palace is a type of pre-engineered building designed to house the educational and meditational activities of the Transcendental Meditation movement. Each Peace Palace is built using standardized plans compatible with Maharishi Sthapatya Veda design principles.
Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp. (MHOED) is a for-profit real estate developer associated with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation movement. First founded in Malibu California in 1988, it has sought to build utopian projects in the U.S., Canada, and Africa with a long-term goal to "reconstruct the entire world", at an estimated cost of $100 trillion.
John William Hurrell Watts was born in Teignmouth, England on September 16, 1850. He emigrated to Canada in 1873. He was the first curator of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts' National Gallery. As an architect, he also designed Fleck/Paterson House, St Augustine's and Booth House. He was a founding member of the Ontario Association of Architects.