Ontario Legislative Building

The Ontario Legislative Building (French: L'édifice de l'Assemblée législative de l'Ontario) is a structure in central Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It houses the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and the viceregal suite of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and offices for members of the provincial parliament (MPPs). The building is surrounded by Queen's Park, sitting on that part south of Wellesley Street, which is the former site of King's College (later the University of Toronto), which was leased from the university by the municipal government of Toronto in 1859, for a "peppercorn" payment of CAD$1 per annum on a 999-year term.The southern portion of the site was later handed over to the provincial government.

 

The building and the provincial government are both often referred to by the metonym "Queen's Park".

 

Designed by Richard A. Waite, the Ontario Legislative Building is an asymmetrical, five-storey structure built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, with a load-bearing iron frame. This is clad inside and out in Canadian materials where possible; the 10.5 million bricks were made by inmates of the Central Prison, and the Ontario sandstone—with a pink hue that has earned the building the colloquial name of The Pink Palace—comes from the Credit River valley and Orangeville, Ontario, and was given a rustic finish for most of the exterior, but dressed for trim around windows and other edges. There can also be seen over the edifice a multitude of stone carvings, including gargoyles, grotesques, and friezes. The exterior is punctuated with uncharacteristically large windows, allowed by the nature of the iron structure.

 

The 1909 North Wing was built by noted Toronto architect George Wallace Gouinlock and E.J. Lennox added two floors to the west wing.

 

The main façade fronts south, with the central axis of the building an extension of that for University Avenue, meaning that the Legislative Building creates a terminating vista for the north end of that main thoroughfare. The Legislative Chamber is directly on this axis, in the centre of the building, and is lit by the three large and prominent arched windows above the main portico. This block is flanked by two domed towers, the west of which was originally intended to hold a clock, but was fitted with a rose window instead, after funds for the clock were never amassed.

 

The asymmetry of the south face was not originally as strong as it is at present; the west wing was designed to have three storeys under a pyramidal roof, as the east wing is still formed nowadays. After the fire of 1909, however, the west side of the Legislative Building was repaired and expanded, with an added fourth floor that bears wall dormer windows in a long, gabled roof. At the far termini of the east–west axis, the wings each turn at right angles and extend north, enclosing a three-sided courtyard, in which sits the 1909 block, a free-standing, four storey structure that is rectangular in plan.

 

Inside, a central hall runs between the main entrance at the south and a grand staircase directly opposite, from the mid-landing of which is accessed the parliamentary library in the 1909 block. At the top landing of this stair is the lobby of the legislative chamber, with the door to which centrally aligned in the south wall. From this core, wide corridors extend east and west, each bisected by a long and narrow atrium lined with ornate railings; the east wing is decorated more in the Victorian fashion in which it was built, with dark wood panelling, while the west wing corridor is more Edwardian Neoclassical in style, the walls lined with white marble, and reflecting the time in which it was built.

 

To the south of the Legislative Building is an open area with extensive tree cover, which is often used for public gatherings and demonstrations. The provincial ministries are housed in the separate Ontario Government Buildings complex to the east, including the Macdonald complex (composed of the Hearst, Mowat, Ferguson and Hepburn towers) and the Whitney Block.

 

The building is featured on both the front and back covers of Rush's 1981 album Moving Pictures.

 

At the north-west corner of the building is the Lieutenant Governor's Suite, which has housed the office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario since 1937, when Ontario sold the province's Government House to the Government of Canada. The space was previously used as the Cabinet dining room and the Speaker's apartment.

 

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