East Block - History

History

The Department of Public Works sent out on 7 May 1859 a call for architects to submit proposals for the new parliament buildings to be erected on Barrack Hill, which was answered by 298 submitted drawings. After the entries were narrowed down to three, then Governor General Sir Edmund Walker Head was approached to break the stalemate, and the winner was announced on 29 August. The departmental buildings, Centre Block, and a new residence for the governor general were each awarded separately, and the team of Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver, under the pseudonym of Stat nomen in umbra, won the prize for the first category.

Construction on the East Block commenced by the end of 1859, at the same time as work on the Centre Block and Stent and Laver's West Block began. By the time it was completed in 1866, the building was four years behind schedule and costs had risen to $706,549, when $150,000 had originally been allocated. As the home of the office of the governor general and the offices for all the Cabinet ministers, the East Block was immediately occupied by the Viscount Monck and his prime minister, John A. Macdonald, who occupied the room at the south west corner of the second floor; the same room was also used by Lester B. Pearson when he was Secretary for External Affairs. George-Étienne Cartier used an office at the northern end of the west wing, which was thereafter used by every prime minister until Pierre Trudeau. The Queen's Privy Council chamber was used for cabinet meetings for 105 years, and was where the British North America Act 1867 was formulated, decisions about the Red River Rebellions were made, and Canada's war involvement was orchestrated. As the number of staff on Parliament Hill grew with the expansion of the country, however, ever more office space was desired; in 1910 a new wing was added to the rear of the East Block, enclosing the courtyard, providing area for the Civil Service and vault space, and costing $359,121.

In the East Block's early days, the wives of ministers and senior staff attended tea in the building each Thursday afternoon, and other socialising took place outside of the working hours of 10am to 4pm. As well, governors general held their annual New Year's Levee in the building from 1870 until the Marquess of Willingdon moved the event to the Centre Block in 1928. Though the building contained many examples of the cutting edge technology of the time, such as a system of electric bells for communications, and state of the art sanitary, ventilation, and heating equipment, its spaces were continually chilly in winter and overheated in summer; during World War I, the external air intakes were closed off for fear of German spies entering them. Thereafter, the East Block showed more and more decay, which was further exacerbated by crude renovations and interventions during the Modernist period, and, at several points, the idea of demolishing the building in favour of a modern office block was put forward.

However, restoration of some interiors began in 1966, seeing Macdonald's office and the privy council chamber returned to an 1870 appearance, and after which the public was allowed entry for a few hours each weekend. Another spurt of renovations were completed in 1981, wherein the governor general's former office was restored, and then the mechanical and electrical systems, and the masonry of the 1910 wing, which had never previously been worked on, were renovated in 1997.