Sinclair Center

The Sinclair Center, now a high-end shopping mall, is composed of a number of exquisitely designed buildings, each with their own unique history. Both the post office building and the center customs examining house were designed by David Ewart, a Scottish-born immigrant.

Ewart set sail for Canada at the age of thirty in 1871. He almost immediately found work in the department of public works in Ottawa, getting paid a livable sum of sixty dollars a month. Within four years, Ewarts efforts had paid off. Ewart would stay dedicated to the Department of Public Works and would eventually make his way straight to the top. (Of course this was not without its trials and tribulations, for there was actually a brief moment where some of Ewarts peers sought to make him resign from his post). In 1896 Ewart would be the department’s chief architect. During this time Ewart would oversee the creation of 340 new buildings including the Sinclair Center. While most of his buildings were designed with a calm Tutor Gothic design, for the Sinclair buildings, Ewart used a “Scottish Baronial” style, the kind romanticized and popularized by Walter Scott in his Waverley Novels.

Bibliography

Fulton, Gordon W. “Ewart, David” Dictonary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15. University of Toronto. 2005. Bibliogrpahi.ca Web. June 2017.

Billings, Robert Williams. The Baronial and Eclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland. vol.1. William Blackwood and Sons: Edinburgh. 1845. Google Books. Web. June 2017