Wallis House

Wallis House is a prominent Ottawa, Canada landmark located at the corner of Rideau Street and Charlotte Street. Today, after restoration, the building serves as a deluxe condiminum complex.

Originally built to house the Carleton County Protestant General Hospital (Don't mistake this for the Ottawa General that went from Sussex and Waller to Smyth Road, now known as the Elizabeth Bruyere Hospital on Bruyere Street), this was the second hospital in the city, after the Catholic hospital run by the Grey Nuns. The hospital's first building was completed in 1851, but had become too small and Wallis House was built to replace it between 1873 and 1876. It was paid for and supported by the various Protestant churches in the area. The east wing was added to the hospital between 1887 and 1898. It remained a hospital until 1924, when it was merged with two others to create the Ottawa Civic Hospital.

The building served as a Catholic seminary until 1943, when the military took it over and used it to house members of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service during the Second World War. The navy gave it the name Wallis House, after Provo Wallis, a hero of the War of 1812, who later rose to be an admiral in the Royal Navy.

After the war, it was left empty, leading to protests from returning veterans who faced a housing crisis. In 1946, a group of veterans and squatters occupied the building until they were forced out by the Governor General's Foot Guards. The event drew enough attention that Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King mandated that it be turned into subsidized housing.

In 1950, the military reoccupied the structure and it served a number of purposes over the next decades, eventually becoming the home of 28 Service battalion, 763 Communications Regiment (formerly 3 Signals Regiment RC Signals) and several minor Army reserve units. The aged building soon became a problem. Constant minor renovations left the interior a warren of hallways and rooms. The military inspectors also considered it to be a dangerous fire trap. There were problems with asbestos and PCBs that would require an expensive clean-up effort. It was thus abandoned by the armed forces and boarded up.

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