Robert Nicholas Slater House
Address: 412 Sparks Street
Construction date: before 1887
The 2 ½ storey brick house was built in the Queen Anne Revival style and was characterized by its picturesque, irregular forms.
Built sometime before 1887 Robert Nicholas Slater purchased the house from the estate of his great-grandfather, Nicholas Sparks. Robert Nicholas Slater, a civil engineer and railway contractor, resided there until his death in 1920. Afterwards, the house remained occupied by various members of the Slater family until at least the 1940s. An apartment was added in 1923 and several other apartments were created during the 1940s.
By 1973, the house was owned by the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, which maintained the ground floor rental apartment. For a number of years, the house served as a branch of Canterbury House, a religious bookstore.
Located adjacent to Christ Church Cathedral, it was among the eight buildings that formed the Cathedral Hill Heritage Conservation District when it was created in 1989.
In 1992 the Anglican Diocese, in need of funds for the restoration of Christ Church Cathedral, received permission from the City to redevelop its Cathedral Hill land — including most of the Heritage District. The City agreed to discuss options for preserving the house with the Diocese. When conservation architect Julian Smith and Sandy Smallwood were finally granted access on April 14,1993, they discovered that an architectural salvage dealer had removed two marble fireplaces and other important architectural elements, at the invitation of church officials, just one day before. The resulting loss of integrity and state of disarray put the feasibility of preservation in doubt.
The former Robert Nicholas Slater House was demolished on May 6, 1993 as Heritage Ottawa and protesters watched. The site was converted to a 50-space parking lot.
