page_title: Wallis House
section_title: Post-war
hierarchical_section_title: Wallis House / History / Post-war
caption_attribution_description: English: A postcard of the General Hospital on Rideau Street in Ottawa, Canada. Constructed in 1897 as the Carleton County Protestant General Hospital, the building served as a hospital until 1924. Over the years, it also served as a seminary, a barracks, an armoury and veterans' housing. In the late 1990s, the building was renovated as loft residences and is now known as Wallis House.
context_page_description: Wallis House is a prominent landmark building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is located at the corner of Rideau Street and Charlotte Street. Today, after restoration, the building serves as a deluxe condominium complex.
context_section_description: 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.
  It remained vacant for several years and was threatened with demolition.  This led to a number of squabbles.  The city wanted the federal government to do something about the dangerous structure in the centre of town, heritage and veterans' groups protested the demolition, and the Government could find no one interested in buying the site. A number of proposals were advanced, perhaps the most unlikely was when the commission on the prostitution problem in the city proposed turning the building into a city run and regulated brothel.
caption: The General Hospital, circa 1920
exif: {}