The 120-year-old boathouse that houses Canada’s oldest rowing club is one step closer to being named a designated heritage building.
Councillors sitting on the city of Ottawa’s built heritage sub-committee passed a request to bestow the blue and white, gambrel-roofed boathouse with an official heritage designation after staff made a presentation in favour of the proposal.
The proposal now has to be considered and passed by the planning committee, and after that, by city council.
Located at 10 Lady Grey Dr. – at the northern tip of Lowertown, along the shoreline of the Ottawa River – the boathouse’s timber-frame structure was constructed in 1898, after the original floating wooden boathouse was damaged in 1887. The building, which features two bays on the ground floor, has been consistently used since.
Although it can be rented out for events, the boathouse is first and foremost home to the Ottawa Rowing Club – founded in 1867, making it the oldest club in the country.
READ MORE: Planning committee approves new high-rise guidelines
A report submitted to the built heritage subcommittee emphasized that the boathouse is both of “historic value” and “architectural value,” calling it a “symbol of the development of organized rowing in Canada.”
“It also stands as an artifact of late 19th century middle-class leisure activities, offering a glimpse into how many of the anglophone middle class would have spent their free time,” the report noted.
On architecture, a presentation by city staff Thursday morning noted the boathouse is a “rare example of 19th-century recreational architecture in Ottawa” — pointing to “unique” features like the structure’s broken gambrel roof, circular windows and the interior’s open ceiling with exposed wooden beams.
Many of the building’s original architectural features are intact, David Maloney, a planner in the city’s heritage and urban design services department, said.
The boathouse actually straddles four separate parcels of land – two of which are owned by to the National Capital Commission, the other two by the city of Ottawa – but the bulk of the building is situated on the two NCC plots. The Crown corporation leases those lots long term to the city of the Ottawa, which then subleases them to the Ottawa Rowing Club.
City staff said the heritage designation would cover all four parcels of land.
There is a second boathouse on those sites – a four-bay clubhouse closer to the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge, built in 1985 – but it is not included in the request for heritage designation under the Ontario Heritage Act.
Comments