The
Heritage Building is today part of
Ottawa City HallThe current Ottawa City Hall is the city hall of Ottawa, Canada. The downtown complex consists of two connected buildings: a modern wing located on Laurier Avenue and a 19th century heritage wing located on Elgin Street...
. It was originally built in 1874 as
Ottawa Normal School and served as a
teacher's collegeA normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name...
. The Gothic Revival building stands at
Elgin StreetElgin Street is a street in the Golden Triangle of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Originally named Biddy's Lane, it was later named after Lord Elgin....
and Lisgar and several extensions were added to the rear of the building.
It was part of Ontario's
normal schoolA normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name...
system of teacher's colleges that had been set up by
Egerton RyersonAdolphus Egerton Ryerson was a Methodist minister, educator, politician, and public education advocate in early Ontario, Canada...
. When Ryerson's system was replaced by a more modern system it was renamed the
Ottawa Teacher's College in 1953. In the 1960s it was decided that Ontario's teacher's colleges should be merged into universities and the teacher's college was merged into the Faculty of Education of the
University of OttawaThe University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
in 1974. Four years later the building was closed and the building was sold to the federal government.
In 1986 it was purchased by the
Regional Municipality of Ottawa-CarletonThe Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton was a regional government area and census division in Ontario, Canada which existed from 1969 until 2001...
, to serve as part of a new RMOC headquarters. To the north of the college the main building of the new RMOC building was erected and links were created to the old school, which was re named the Heritage Building. With the creation of the new city of Ottawa in 2000 the building became part of Ottawa City Hall. The mayor has his office in this building, overlooking Elgin Street.