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Keyes Block - Antique & Modern, Local & Worldly
The fire brought forth the means of revitalizing Bridge Street, the major thoroughfare for commercial and civic activities. Even in such tragic circumstances, there was "a general feeling of relief and gladness that these buildings [were] out of the way. It was felt for years that some day they would go, and that modern blocks would take their place. True to this view, Mr. MacDiarmid [a major business proprietor of Carleton Place who lost five of his buildings on MacDiarmid Block to the fire] has been talking of visiting Ottawa to search for some pleasing structures to duplicate."[2] Throughout the next year, the street would transform to instill Carleton Place with a contemporary image that represented a diffusion of architectural style from the major urban centers that lay on both ends of the railroad tracks.
Keyes Block fell squarely into this urban aesthetic, with its plate-glass ground floor and masonry upper level reiterating the commercial styles of Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto - while the construction of masonry-lined residential spaces above plate-glassed commercial units was already being considered "so old that it has almost come to be accepted" as default in such metropolises where interest in extended plate-glass curtain walls and 'Chicago School' skyscrapers was burgeoning, its presence in a small Ontario town would have been quite a boon[3].
This form of mixed-use architecture is unique in its seamless blending of work and home typologies and of public and private space. Even more so is its worldwide prevalence, having been developed concurrently across all inhabited continents through unified desires of combining economic and family spheres to maximize flexibility and cost-maintenance efficiency. In this respect, Keyes Block is both endemic and universal in its construction and design. The unity in work and home space was crucial in the upward mobility of the Keyes family, as the success of their initial wooden home allowed for its reinvention into a double-unit masonry-built enterprise. With this success translating across its peers, Bridge Street was further developed as an important locale within Carleton Place, with Keyes Block illustrating in its architecture the interweaving networks of people and places, of home life and work life, and of commercial and civic activity that it encouraged and reinforced.
This residential-commercial combination has, in recent history, been threatened by shifting paradigms of urban design, most noticeably in the cities where Keyes Block took inspiration from. Changing social ideals, from living in strictly regimented residential districts to shopping as a separated leisure activity requiring its own spaces, combined with the increased precedent for mega-corporations and franchises over the traditional mom-and-pop shop, all contributed to divisions between work, home, and leisure that dictated urban design and restrictive zoning laws throughout the 20th century. With so much desire for a 'divided city', where rich & poor, work & home, and upper & lower classes were separate, came the unfortunate painting of the mixed-use property as an image of "insalubriousness and poverty...synonymous with the objectionable characteristics of the pre-modern city"[4]. While this phenomenon has continued and expanded into smaller-scaled towns and rural areas, Keyes Block and Bridge Street has continued to maintain the time-tested localized commercial typology that prioritizes social unity and active community participation over profit margins and socio-economic fragmentation.
Now into the 21st century, with the returning desire for more community-centered, decentralized economic organization, manifested in initiatives such as the Localization movement, to combat the segmentation of contemporary society, the efficient and intensely social mixed-use architecture of Keyes Block provides a key towards facilitating a more well-rounded and sustainable economic system - Keyes Block may reinvent itself as an ultra-modern structure in its own right, returning to its position as a symbol of modernity that it adopted over 100 years ago.
