Centre Block

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Coordinates: 45.425194174199° N 75.700102341103° W

The Centre Block of Parliament Hill

The Centre Block is the main building of the three on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario.

The House of Commons and the Senate are located in this building, as well as a number of offices for members of Parliament (MPs), Senators, and senior administration for both Chambers. The Prime Minister's parliamentary office is also in the Centre Block, although he also has an office across the street in the Langevin Block where most of his staff are located. The Leader of the Opposition's office is also located directly above the Prime Minister's office.

Built in a modern Gothic revival style, the rectangular Centre Block is 144 metres long by 75 metres deep, and six stories high. There are more than 25 different types of stone and marble were used in the building’s construction, though most of the exterior is Nepean sandstone, quarried near Ottawa, and the interior walls are sheeted with Tyndall limestone quarried from Manitoba.

The western wing of the building contains the House of Commons chamber, decorated in green as in the British House of Commons, and its foyer, featuring portraits of prime ministers and carvings depicting Canadian industries. To the east is the Senate chamber, decorated in red, and its foyer, featuring portraits of Canadian monarchs.

At the central axis of the building, the Rotunda and the Library of Parliament are linked by the Hall of Honour. The Rotunda provide access to the Memorial Chapel, which contains the Books of Remembrance listing all of Canada's war dead, and to the Peace Tower.

The main entrance to the Centre Block is featured on the obverse of the Canadian twenty-dollar bill.

The richly decorated interior of the Centre Block contains allegorical scenes.

[edit] Great fire and rebuilding

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The Centre Block as it appeared around 1870.

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The Centre Block the morning after the 1916 fire

The Centre Block burned in 1916; the edifice was entirely destroyed except for the Library of Parliament, whose treasures were preserved by a quick-thinking librarian who was able to close its massive, iron doors. The Centre Block was immediately rebuilt, being completed in 1920, with the Peace Tower, commemorating the end of the First World War, being completed in 1927. The new structure, designed by John Pearson and Omar Marchand, again embraced Gothic Revival, but also integrated the Beaux Arts ideas current at the time.

The Peace Tower is the most prominent part of the buildings. It replaced the 55-metre Victoria Tower, burned in the 1916 fire. Like the entire interior and exterior of the building, the tower is decorated with approximately 370 stone carvings, including gargoyles, grotesques, and freizes.

The centrepiece of the new buildings is the Hall of Honour in the Centre Block, which is notable for being one of the only places where Canadians can lie in state.

Since then there have been a number of significant incidents in the building's history. In 1966 Paul Joseph Chartier killed himself in a Centre Block washroom while preparing to bomb the House of Commons. In 1989 Charles Yacoub hijacked a Greyhound bus and drove it up onto Parliament Hill.