197-199 WURTEMBURG STREET

1869

Children’s Hospital/Turkish Embassy

197 Wurtemburg Street Circa 1869

The original section of this house was erected around 1869 for William F. Whitcher, Commissioner of Fisheries. It was a two and a half storey house built in the Picturesque Gothic Revival style. The Children’s Hospital, which occupied the structure from 1888 until 1904, probably added the two wings and the late-Victorian half-timbering. A photograph from the early 20th century shows a perpendicular fanlight and sidelights around the main entrance, and a latticed archway covered by a roof between the entrance frontispiece and a later frontispiece to the right of it. Since then, windows on the upper and lower floors have been reconfigured, a second entrance has been placed in the right frontispiece, and semi-circular porticos supported by brackets have been placed over both entrances.

The building has served as the Embassy of Turkey since 1953. It is representative of the ambitious houses that government ministers and senior civil servants began to build in Ottawa after Confederation, and of the institutional use to which they were later put.

Designated Heritage Property, 1980, City of Ottawa

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Source: Ottawa - A Guide To Heritage Structures, Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee,

City of Ottawa

1890