Fleet Street Pumping Station

Heritage: I did tour the Fleet Street Pumping Station (you can google lots of information on it) during a Doors Open Ottawa, and I remember the loud machinery, and the stunning fact that this station still meets a large percentage of Ottawa's water supply demand.  Even more incredible, the water flows using an elaborately designed hydraulic system that does not require electricity. 

Very ingenious for the times and perhaps more so for today. Worth a visit if it's open for a tour.  I also had a peek up on the second story, there were some artifacts in storage but mostly it's a vast open space -- you'd think it could be turned into some form of use, if restored.  The beams, windows, and, design are very interesting, I don't have the history on the architecture, it survived the great fire around 1900 (you'd think a water pumping station would), and, it sits as a reminder of what the area may have looked like in the 19th century.

 

The water comes in from the Ottawa river via a rebuilt canal that and water line that you'll ride over on your bicycle when on the NCC bike path nearby.  More research and / or links to follow however I defer to Google.

The area is being re-built, while some claim the NCC has bungled the Lebreton Flats having initially decimated it after evicting all tenants in the early 1960's, then, leaving the area empty for decades, and now, building what many to consider to be uninspiring condos with very little to hint of the original heritage of the area.  No that's not true, just in front of the war museum are a series of posters describing the former malcontents who lived in the flats, the fighting and drinking, the industrial wasteland and shack-world it had become. A begrudging nod at best to the families that lived here once upon a time, I'll post a few pics in a future post.

Lebreton Flats, once the area where things were made in Ottawa, is slowly coming back to life as green space, condos, and other visions of the NCC.  The NCC is today still heavily influenced by the Greber plan, a post-WWII attempt to remake Ottawa into a beautified capital in the age of the automobile and greenspace untarnished by what would now be considered heritage architecture.