Fleck/Paterson House

Last updated
Fleck/Patterson House
Algeria, Ottawa.JPG
Fleck/Paterson House; currently the Algerian Embassy in Ottawa.
Fleck/Paterson House
Location Ottawa
Address500 Wilbrod Street
Coordinates 45°25′49″N75°40′24″W / 45.4303°N 75.6733°W / 45.4303; -75.6733 Coordinates: 45°25′49″N75°40′24″W / 45.4303°N 75.6733°W / 45.4303; -75.6733
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.

Contents

History

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]

Algerian embassy

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.

See also

Related Research Articles

Sandy Hill, Ottawa Neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

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

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 and York Defunct international property development firm based in Toronto

Olympia & York was a major international property development firm based in Toronto, 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 (Ottawa)

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.

Place de Ville

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 building in Ottawa. It was once advertised as "Ottawa's glittering answer to the Toronto Dominion Centre and Place Ville Marie".

Thomas Ahearn

Thomas Ahearn, PC was a Canadian inventor and businessman. Ahearn, a native of Ottawa, Ontario, 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.

Queens Quay Terminal

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.

<i>The Daytona Beach News-Journal</i> Newspaper in Florida

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 food processing and distribution company. Founded by George Weston in 1882, the company today consists of Weston Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary, and Loblaw Companies Limited, the country's largest supermarket retailer, in which it maintains controlling interest. Retail brands include President's Choice, No Name, and Joe Fresh, in addition to bakery brands Wonder, Country Harvest, D'Italiano, Ready Bake and Gadoua. The company is controlled by the Weston family, which owns a majority share in George Weston Limited.

The Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway, or OA&PS, is a historic railway that operated in central and eastern Ontario, Canada from 1897 until 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.

Maharishi Vastu Architecture

Maharishi Vastu Architecture (MVA) is a set of architectural and planning principles assembled by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi based on "ancient Sanskrit texts". Maharishi Vastu Architecture is also called "Maharishi Sthapatya Veda", "Fortune-Creating" buildings and homes, and "Maharishi Vedic architecture".

Architecture of Ottawa

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.

René G. Lépine, Sr. was a Canadian real estate developer, philanthropist and founder of Groupe Lépine, a privately owned real estate company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, of which he was the Chairman and President.

Shaw Centre (Ottawa)

The Shaw Centre is a convention centre located in the downtown core of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It opened in April 2011. The Centre replaces the Ottawa Congress Centre, which opened in 1983 and is built on the site of the Ottawa Congress Centre building which was demolished in 2008-2009.

Maharishi Peace Palace

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

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. 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. He died in Ottawa on August 26, 1917.

Minto Group

The Minto Group is a Canadian real estate company, based in Ottawa, Ontario. It builds homes in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and Florida. It also manages multi-residential and commercial properties in Ontario and Alberta. It has built 85,000 new homes, and manages $2.9 billion in assets, including 13,000 multi-residential units and 2.7 million square feet of commercial space. The firm is one of Ottawa's largest residential landlords. Minto also has a publicly traded subsidiary, holding some of its multi-residential units, called Minto Apartment Real Estate Investment Trust. Minto is also partners with Dellray Group, another leading real estate developer.

Uncle Sam Atrium Shopping and office complex in Troy, New York, U.S.

The Uncle Sam Atrium and Parking Garage is an enclosed urban shopping mall, office space, and parking garage in downtown Troy, New York. Originally envisioned as a much larger $96 million shopping mall in the early 1970s, the project stagnated due to financial problems until local developer Carl Grimm put forth the financing to complete a smaller shopping center. Due to its small size, Troy's population loss, and competition from nearby larger suburban malls, the Uncle Sam Atrium became underutilized and mostly vacant by the early 1990s. In the late 1990s and 2000s, the mall was bought by David Bryce and saw most of its retail space converted to offices for the New York State Department of Health and Department of Labor. Today, the mall along with the attached Frear Building is mostly occupied by office space and retail.

References

  1. Phillips, Rhys (January 29, 1994). "Boastful mansions; by architect John W.H. Watts". The Ottawa Citizen. p. F.1.
  2. Doors Open (Ottawa)