page_title: Rideau Hall
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Rideau Hall / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Self-created
context_page_description: Rideau Hall is the official residence in Ottawa of both the Canadian monarch and his or her representative, the Governor General of Canada. It stands in Canada's capital on a 0.36-square-kilometre estate at 1 Sussex Drive, with the main building consisting of approximately 175 rooms across 9,500 square metres, and 27 outbuildings around the grounds. Rideau Hall's site lies outside the centre of Ottawa, giving it the character of a private home. It is one of two official royal residences maintained by the federal Crown, the other being the Citadelle of Quebec.
  Most of Rideau Hall is used for state affairs, only 500 square metres of its area being dedicated to private living quarters, while additional areas serve as the offices of the Canadian Heraldic Authority and the principal workplace of the governor general and his or her staff; either the term Rideau Hall, as a metonym, or the formal idiom Government House is employed to refer to this bureaucratic branch.
context_section_description: The original 1838 structure was relatively small; only two storeys tall with a full-height, central, curved bay, and an accordingly curved pediment on top, the villa was designed by Thomas McKay (who had also designed and built Earnscliffe) in a Regency style, inspired by the work of architect Sir John Soane, who had himself designed a never realised government house for the then capital of Upper Canada, York, in 1818. Unlike the present arrangement, the rooms of the McKay villa for entertaining, sleeping, and service were dispersed throughout the two floors of the structure, with the main parlour located on the second level, in an oval room behind the curved, south bay, which National Capital Commission Chief Architect David Scarlett said in 2014 was made in such a shape so as to display the advanced abilities of McKay's stonemasons. The main entrance to the house was on the west side and opened into a hall with stairs to the upper floor directly ahead. Along the south front were a library, a dining room, and a boudoir, all with French doors opening onto a narrow balcony; the dining room was served by three of these doors, one of which now opens into the Tent Room's antechamber, one into the Long Gallery, and one that still opens to the outside. The French door originally opening from the boudoir is today the window of the Pauline Vanier Room.
  Initially rented from the McKay family as a temporary accommodation for the Canadian viceroy, the house has since been expanded numerous times. The Viscount Monck oversaw the first addition to the villa in 1865: a long wing extending to the east and built in a style that, while attempting to be harmonious with the original, was intended to resemble the governor general's residence in Quebec, Spencer Wood, which Monck greatly preferred over Rideau Hall. The extension was thus done in an overall Norman style of design that was typical in Quebec at the time, and had a similar long, covered verandah, a cross hall, and a new staircase capped by an ornate stained glass lantern. The exterior walls were clad in ashlar limestone masonry and the roof in cedar shingles until replaced by copper in 1913.
  In 1872, during the tenure of the Earl of Dufferin, the indoor tennis court and the ballroom were added to the western end of the house, arranged to the south and north, respectively, of the main entrance. The ballroom is a structure of heavy timber framing with brick infill and finished stone exterior. Then, when the Earl of Minto arrived in 1898 with his large family and household, the Minto Wing was constructed on the east end of Rideau Hall and was completed in the following year, though this was again intended to only be a temporary measure until a proper government house could be built. Minto's successor, the Earl Grey, added the governor general's study to the far east end of the Monck Wing, thus symmetrically balancing out the curved bay and pediment of the original McKay villa to the west.
  One of the greatest alterations to the form of Rideau Hall came in 1913, with the construction of the Mappin Block as a link between the ballroom and Tent Room, along with a re-facing of the two latter structures to harmonise their windows, cornice heights, and cladding (in a limestone ashlar), all in an "adapted Florentine architectural style" designed by Chief Dominion Architect David Ewart. The block is three storeys in height, and its front is divided by pilasters into five bays, with the central one slightly wider than the equal other four. The windows on the main floor are each surrounded by smaller pilasters beneath a triangular pediment formed by keel moulding geisons, while the second level windows are each simply framed by astragal moulding broken at the top by a keystone. A heavy entablature separates the second and third levels, atop which sits less pronounced pilasters and simply framed windows, with the entire facade capped by a narrow cornice and a pediment with a tympanum that bears a bas relief of the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom (believed to be the largest rendition in the Comm
caption: Floor plan of the main level of Rideau Hall, showing the various accretions onto the original McKay villa
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