At first glance, the Canadian Museum of Nature seems a little out of place. Housed in the grandiose, a castle-like Victoria Memorial Museum building on McLeod Street, the building would seem better suited to the rolling hills of medieval Europe than the middle of a bustling Ottawa neigbourhood where it currently sits.
Canadian Museum of Nature
Instead of kings and knights strolling the castle grounds, woolly mammoth and dinosaur statues are scattered about, providing hints to the treasures the museum contains. Everything from frogs to birds to the aforementioned dinosaurs provide a draw for school field trips and tourists from local areas and beyond.
The relic of early 20th century architecture stands in an area that has changed dramatically since the building’s completion in 1912. Where there was once only farmland and occasional houses, residential neighbourhoods have sprung up to the north, east, and west, with traffic from the 417 buzzing by only a few blocks to the south.
The building was originally designated as the site of the National Museum of Canada, but in the 1960s it was split into two branches: the National Museum of Natural Sciences, and the National Museum of Man, which would eventually go on to become the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1986.
The building has also served an important role in Ottawa’s political history. When a fire in 1916 destroyed much of Parliament’s Centre Block, the House of Commons took up residence in the building until 1922.
While the area surrounding has changed so much, the building itself hasn’t remained untouched by time. Major renovations began in 2004 and were completed in the spring of 2010. The main addition was the Queen’s Lantern, a tall glass structure that sits atop the entrances to the building. It takes the place of a former tower on the building that was removed in 1915 due to structural instability.