Centre Block

the main building of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill

Ottawa, Ontario

Current building: 1 July 1927

Centre Block stands at the heart of Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, housing the House of Commons and the Senate chambers along with the offices of Canada's prime minister and other senior officials. The original building, constructed between 1859 and 1876 in a Gothic Revival style, was destroyed by a fire in 1916 that killed seven people, sparing only the adjoining Library of Parliament, whose fireproof iron doors are credited with containing the blaze. A new Centre Block was rebuilt on the same site between 1916 and 1922 in a similar Gothic Revival idiom, now crowned by the Peace Tower, a clock and bell tower completed in 1927 as a memorial to Canadians killed in the First World War. The building underwent an extensive multi-year rehabilitation beginning in the late 2010s, during which Parliament's sittings were relocated to a temporary chamber elsewhere on the grounds.

The walls are faced with more than 50,000 blocks of over 24 different types of stone, though a rustic finished Nepean sandstone is the predominant kind of masonry, with dressed stone trim around the 550 windows and other edges.