Esplanade Laurier

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L'Esplanade Laurier
L'Esplanade Laurier
One of the towers of L'Esplanade Laurier
One of the towers of L'Esplanade Laurier


L'Esplanade Laurier is a noteworthy office complex in downtown Ottawa, Canada. It consists of two 22-storey towers, with a podium containing a two-storey shopping mall. The entire structure is clad in white marble, making it clearly stand out of from the other towers in the city. At 88 meters tall, the two towers are the ninth and tenth tallest in the city. It is located at the intersection of major Ottawa streets, Laurier Avenue between Bank Street and O'Connor Street.

The building was built by Olympia and York in 1973-1975, and was intended to be occupied by federal government workers. It was one of the last office complexes of that era purpose-built by the private sector for the federal government, as the government itself project-managed complexes constructed in the late 1970s, including the C.D. Howe Building and Place du Portage. Today, l'Esplanade Laurier contains the main offices of the Department of Finance, and houses over 2000 public servants. The shops and food court in the mall on the lower levels mostly cater to the office workers.

In 2002, the building was closed for several days after an accident caused hundreds of liters of ethylene glycol to enter the water supply. After the system was flushed the towers returned to operation.

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