From train station to Red Chamber on the Rideau: a visual guide to the Senate of Canada Building

If these walls could talk, what tales they would tell! Opened in 1912 as the city’s central train station, the floors of Union Station felt the boots of the first soldiers to head to Europe in World War I. In 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill decamped here from U.S. President Roosevelt’s luxurious personal train, stopping to confer with his Canadian counterparts about the war effort after meeting with the Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbour. And on a lighter note, the late, great Elvis Presley strode across the platform in 1957 on his way to perform two Ottawa shows.

When the tracks were removed in 1966, the lofty building would be refitted for its second life as the Government Conference Centre. The next few decades saw G20 meetings, discussions on the patriation of the constitution, and debates on how the Meech Lake Accord should proceed.

In February, the building launched its third life as the Senate of Canada Building, the home of the Red Chamber for at least the next decade as Centre Block undergoes a full restoration.

The beaux-arts building has undergone a truly magical transformation — one that restores it to its former grandeur while modernizing the spaces within. In a joint venture, Diamond Schmitt Architects and KWC Architects revived the landmark, “weaving in the modern while saving the original elements,” in the words of Martin Davidson of Diamond Schmitt.

Gone are the drop ceilings that hid the former train station’s glorious skylights and vaulted ceilings. After six long years, the grand building looks like her old self again, her major public spaces restored.

Though the renovation has also added committee rooms and parliamentary offices, the original layout of the train station is now easier to visualize — especially with the guidance of the architecture firm’s crosssection rendering.

Above: the entrance to the Senate of Canada Building, with its grand promenade and stairs down to the general waiting room, looks much as it did when the building first opened in 1912. The original chandeliers were cleaned and restored, then equipped with energy-efficient LED lights. Recent developments in LED technology allowed the architects to maintain the warm light of the original fixtures

Above, right: the Senate Chamber was once Union Station’s departure hall. The 10-metre coffered ceiling now allows natural light to flood into the room (the ceiling had been covered when the building was used as a conference centre). Canada boasts 10 native species of maple trees, the leaves of which show up in a repeated motif in the royal red carpet

Right: the landscape images at the entrance to two of the three committee rooms are formed out of a series of large perforated bronze panels. The architects chose images of Newfoundland’s Cape Race and Alberta’s Moraine Lake, then converted them into dot patterns. The panoramas look like photographs from old newspaper clippings