OTTAWA — For much of the 20th century, Charles Ogilvy Ltd., known as “Ogilvy’s”, was one of Ottawa’s top department stores. Famous for tartan boxes, this was the place to shop for “quality” goods of every description, and where staff spent a lifetime.
Presiding over it all was an ethical local businessman who granted employees shares in the company and closed display-window curtains on Sundays so the Sabbath wouldn’t be commercialized.
Though the Ogilvy name disappeared from Ottawa’s retail landscape in 1986, memories were kept alive by the building. It anchors the corner of Rideau and Nicholas streets, and was designed by gifted Ottawa architect W.E. Noffke.
These are its last weeks. Built in 1907, the heritage-designated building is slated for demolition at the end of January. Part of the original façade will be preserved as a relic.
Its significance is more than architectural; the story of Ogilvy’s reveals a social history of Ottawa and the changing nature of retail. Ogilvy’s evolution “parallels the North American-wide development of the department store as the most important retail phenomenon of the late 19th and 20th centuries,” says a City of Ottawa heritage statement.
Charles Ogilvy was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1861 and moved in 1863 to Ottawa, where his father ran a stationery shop. At age 13, he became a store clerk. “I was not a boy who cared very much about school,” he would say.
Thirteen years later, in 1887, Ogilvy opened a small dry goods store at 92 Rideau St. It was the age of horse-drawn streetcars, wooden sidewalks and lumberjacks in hobnail boots. The counters and shelves were stocked with fabrics and trimmings; the lamps were gaslit.
“It developed into a meeting place where friends were accustomed to stop and discuss the topics of the day,” according to the store’s 1947 Diamond Jubilee booklet. “With the sides of the pot-bellied stove glowing red, and the windows frosted over, the little store took on the atmosphere of a small-size community centre.”
The enterprise was founded on the motto “Good Merchandise, At a Fair Price, With Service.” Ogilvy offered a one-price policy, a departure from bargaining. Ogilvy, a devout Christian, told the truth about goods: Only 100 per cent silk could be called pure. “I built my business because people could trust me,” he said.
The three-storey shop that opened in 1907 at 126 Rideau St. was one of the first steel-and-concrete structures in Ottawa. As business grew, the fourth and fifth floors were added in 1931 and 1934, making it the largest department store in the capital.
The building is flat-roofed and clad in buff-coloured brick. Distinctive features, valued for their design heritage, include the rounded northeast corner at Nicholas Street, the generously scaled wood-frame windows, the ornamented metal cornice at the roof line and wall panels decorated with a motif called “the tree of life.”
Ogilvy’s flourished during the lean years of the Depression and two world wars. Inside the store, abundance and civility contrasted with the harsh world outside. Piles of suitcases, a profusion of radios and stacks of folded men’s shirts greeted the visitor. The interior was designed with high ceilings, suspended lamps, checked floors and glass shop fittings.
“The success of Ottawa’s local department stores, such as Ogilvy’s, Freimans, Murphy-Gamble and Caplan’s, discouraged the expansion of national chains (including Eaton’s, Simpsons, Simpsons-Sears and the Bay) into the national capital region until the 1950s,” Ottawa architectural historian Ken Elder has written.
Ogilvy’s sold everything from foundation garments to farm hardware. It delivered with a fleet of trucks and repaired what it sold. It was the Ikea of the day, except the sturdy unfinished furniture which was made in Westboro still survives under layers of paint in many Ottawa households.
“If you got a coat there, you’d wear it for life,” recalls longtime employee Ada Henwood, 81. “It was a lovely place to work. You made such good friends.”
The welcome was friendly and the merchandise, whether footballs or furs, could be discussed with knowledgeable staff. “A customer is the most important person ever to enter our store,” said a store-procedure guide. “We are not doing him a favour by serving him — he is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
The guide warned workers against any word or deed which “might be considered in questionable taste or likely to jeopardize Ogilvy’s reputation for integrity, fair dealings, good service and courtesy.”
By 1947, there was a staff of 600, including elevator operators and a resident nurse. “We were a family,” says Phil Conquer, 85, the last vice president. Ogilvy, who was married, but had no children, “was like the head of the family. He knew all the staff. He treated everybody with respect.”
Conquer joined the advertising department in 1946 at age 19. His pay was $18 a week.
Soon after, he bumped into Ogilvy on the elevator. “Oh yes, we met three weeks ago,” he said. “You’re young Conquer.” The elderly man asked to touch the fabric of Conquer’s tweed suit. “May I? Very nice material. Eatons Montreal by chance?” The seasoned merchant had guessed correctly.
Roy Hyndman, the company’s last president, started in 1929 when he was 16, selling roller skates. In 1939, when he went to serve in the Second World War, Ogilvy gave him 100 shares. After that, everybody with 10 years of service received stock.
Ogilvy’s added a store at Billings Bridge in 1962 and Lincoln Fields in 1972. The main store, which had had a major fire in 1969, expanded in 1983 when the Rideau Centre opened. But by then it was losing money to national chains.
“At that stage, we could be called old fashioned,” said Conquer. “We appealed to older people. We weren’t appealing to youth.”
In 1984, shareholders voted to sell the company to G. W. Robinson Ltd. of Burlington for $10.9 million. The stores operated as Robinson-Ogilvy, before being sold in 1986 to Comark Services. The chain became known as Robinson’s and closed in 1992.
Ottawa’s Ogilvy’s was not related to the Ogilvy store in Montreal.
The flagship Rideau Street store has stood empty for 20 years. Last week, workers began testing how best to remove the façade.
“We’re going to be dismantling the original three-storey facade, brick-by-brick, panel-by-panel, window-by-window and restoring them and reconstructing them on the new Rideau Centre expansion,” says architect Barry Padolsky.
Dismantling is expected to be completed by the end of January, followed by demolition of the building behind it.
“In 2015, when the Rideau Centre expansion is done, that corner will feature the façade,” he said. “It will have elements that have not been there for 50 years: cornices that were stripped off, ornamental brickwork which had been removed.”
President and founder Charles Ogilvy will continue to have a presence; Padolsky’s office will reconstruct a medallion bearing his initials.