Interesting links and notes on updates to my main website.



[to search, use Blogger search in top bar]

1950 Plan for the National Capital

Ok, I can't claim to have read this yet, but the diagrams and images are awesome.

The root is

http://qshare.queensu.ca/Users01/gordond/planningcanadascapital/greber1950/index.htm

Images and Diagrams I liked:
* Residence Distribution of Civil Servants, 1947
* Existing Railway System (can't make out the date)
* Distribution of Street Cars and Buses, 1948
* Daily Volume and Distribution of Street Car and Bus Passengers, 1948
* Existing Open Space, 1946
* Scale Model of the Centre of Ottawa, 1938

In particular, check out
* 204. A half-century of progress in the development of the centre of Ottawa-1900
* 205. A half-century of progress in the development of the centre of Ottawa- 1940
(which looks beautiful to the modern eye, but looked unspeakably backward to them - and also this view explains a lot about the features of the landscape, like the War Memorial, that don't read well any more but made perfect sense then)
* 206. A half-century of progress in the development of the centre of Ottawa-1950
(a vision of the future, part of which they built, as evidenced by the giant f-up that is the area around the old Union Station now, and which looked fantastically modern to them, while looking heart-stoppingly chilling to us today)

Labels: 1950, ottawa, urban planning

posted by Richard at 20:48 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)