Susanna McLeod
Special to Canadian Design and Construction Report
First Nations, explorers, and surveyors were guided by the stars to reach distant destinations and then return safely home. Peering at the glimmering galaxy across the night sky in the late 1800s, the first Chief Astronomer William Frederick King, and chief clerk and astronomer Dr. Otto Klotz yearned for better equipment and more space. The Department of the Interior staff had outgrown the small Cliff Street observatory near Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings. They petitioned the Minister of the Interior for a national observatory, something to reflect the significance of astrophysical research.
Approving the project in March 1899, funds were requested from the Minister of Public Works. About $16,000 was earmarked for the new observatory, and in mid-1901 a parcel at the north end of the Central Experimental Farm was selected. Chief Dominion Architect David Ewart (1841-1921) personally designed a four-storey tower with two flat-roofed, T-shaped wings. The wings were carefully placed at a 15˚ angle from the central tower.
Scottish-born Ewart trained at Edinburgh School of Art and immigrated to Canada at age 30, bringing his wife and family. Employed with Dominion of Canada’s Public Works Department as engineer and assistant architect in the early 1870s, Ewart was appointed Chief Dominion Architect in 1896. He envisioned the observatory with “a blend of Romanesque Revival and Edwardian Classicism,” said Jacqueline Hucker in the Federal Heritage Review report in 1992. “This eclectic blend of styles permitted the large heavy telescope to be seamlessly integrated into the architectural composition.”
The functional building began by contractor Théophile Viau excavating a basement in July 1902. The load-bearing walls on the concrete foundation were designed with buff-coloured rock-faced Nepean sandstone, and red, smooth “Sackville sandstone and a concrete roof,” said Hucker. Steel beams support the floors and the roof. One side of the building is public-facing with attractive detailing; the working side of the building has “a skylight in the photographic laboratory and the curved projecting wall of the stairs.” The red sandstone frames “the windows and doors, by running in uninterrupted string courses around the building and by emphasizing the angular geometry of the octagonal tower.”
The dramatic main entrance at the tower is highlighted by “incised lettering and royal coat of arms,” according to the Heritage Designation in 1992. (Parks Canada) Stone detailing includes “the foliated capitals which flank the main entrance and separate the windows of the tower’s drum,” and “decorative ironwork includes the drum’s balustrade.”
Capping the tower, the precision-built retractable dome is the copper-clad cherry on top. The revolving dome was manufactured by precision engineers Warner & Swasey of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The firm also produced the observatory’s first telescope, with optics prepared by John Brashear, also of Pittsburgh. The dome was installed in 1904 and the 15-inch (38 cm) diameter refracting telescope with doublet lens was installed on April 17, 1905. At that moment, the telescope was the country’s largest optical instrument.
That same year, an addition of the one-storey transit house at the western wing was built by Ottawa contractors McGillivray & Labelle. The transit house “housed the meridian circle telescope and transit instruments used to determine time, longitude and star positions,” said Parks Canada.
The South Azimuth building was designed by Ewart and constructed in 1912—the small one-storey Gothic stone building resembled a medieval tower. An essential element for observatory operations, the building “sheltered a telescope and meridian pier, which marked a position south of the meridian circle telescope,” said Parks Canada in “Classified Federal Heritage Buildings: South Azimuth Building,” December 10, 1992.
In 1914, the Photo Equatorial Building (also called Building No. 9) was constructed as an extension of the Observatory. Under the Heritage umbrella, the smaller structure featured a retractable copper dome and functioned as a specialized space for detailed celestial photography.
An opening ceremony was held on April 29, 1905 for the press gallery. The journalists travelled to the Experimental Farm to meet “the institution’s leading astronomers, Dr. King, Mr. Klotz, and Mr. J.S. Plaskett, who explained to the men the workings of the astronomical instruments.” Powell wrote. Each person had the rare opportunity to stargaze with the new equipment.
Dominion Observatory staff members later “conducted pure research into spectroscopic binary stars,” and the facility “also assumed responsibility for seismic, magnetic and gravimetric analysis,” said Powell. (Binary stars are close together, appearing as a central mass, and were difficult to see even with a telescope.)
Initial cost estimates were undervalued. Completing the main structure in 1904, the bill was a heart-stopping $110,047, according to Hucker. Awe-inspiring for the era, the telescope had a magnifying capacity of 1,500 times. The massive instrument with length of 5.94 m cost $14,625.59, and worth every penny in scientific value.
Undergoing multiple advancements and changes over the decades, the Dominion Observatory merged with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) in 1986. END 800 words
Susanna McLeod is a Kingston-based writer specializing in Canadian history.
