Westgate: Planning and Opening

Like Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto, Westgate Shopping Centre opened to critical success and great fanfare in Ottawa in early May 1955.[1] Westgate was designed by Montreal architects Milton Eliasoph, Saul Berkowitz, and Maxwell Kalman, following Montreal’s Norgate Shopping Centre, which Kalman also designed, by only a few years.[2] Norgate is the oldest shopping centre in Montreal and the first in Canada, opened in 1949.  Thanks to Ottawa real estate developer Harold Shenkman, Westgate Shopping Centre—strategically located at Carling Avenue, Merivale Road, and the new cross-town expressway—was the first of its kind in the National Capital Region.[3]

Perhaps influenced by E. G. Faludi, the Hungarian-born architect, engineer, and notable figure in Canadian planning, Westgate embodied several of the ideals of the suburban planning framework Faludi established in the design of shopping centres in new residential areas.[4] Westgate Shopping Centre offered a massive parking lot for over 1,000 cars.[5] The controlled commercial space offered a continuous covered walkway to the curb and parking lot. The design accommodated the lot’s shape, integrating an L-shaped structure into a triangular lot by a major roadway and the growing Carlington neighbourhood. Westgate’s L-shaped strip mall differed from Faludi’s fan-shaped cluster, used for Thorncrest Plaza in Etobicoke, Toronto, in the 1950s.[6] Still, Westgate’s spatial arrangement set an early postwar Ontario precedent, spurring the development of others. In 1956, Carlingwood Shopping Centre opened several kilometres west on Carling Avenue.[7] Later, in 1967, St. Laurent Shopping Centre was built at the intersection of St. Laurent Boulevard and Coventry Road. 

As Ottawa’s first shopping centre, Westgate attracted visitors with its simple yet modernist building design, stores accessible directly from its large parking lot, and several attractive anchor store tenants, namely Steinberg’s supermarket and Freiman’s department store.[8] Steinberg’s Grocery, new but already successful in Ontario, offered visitors air conditioning and music via a speaker system.[9] With affordable groceries, decorative wall panels, and an automatic orange juice dispenser for 10 cents a glass, customers were delighted. Even more enticing was the experience at Freiman’s department store. Of the shopping centre’s eighteen stores, Freiman’s, or A. J. Freiman Limited, was unique.[10] Lawrence Freiman, from a wealthy Ottawa merchant family, led Freiman's at Westgate at the risk of millions because of its location in the West End. The family had profited the most from sales made at their main Rideau Street store.  

That gamble proved successful. Despite doubts about the location—similar to the criticism Harold Shenkman faced when building the centre on a muddy Carling Avenue lot—Freiman’s became Westgate’s largest outlet store.[11] Freiman’s spanned two floors connected by escalators, housing a beauty salon, snack bar, and upscale restaurant. Modern commercial features included a store charge plate, a forerunner to the credit card. In addition to featuring two anchor stores, Westgate Shopping Centre also offered convenience through a range of other businesses. Shoppers could access a Royal Bank, Throop Pharmacy, Reitman’s, Tip Top Tailors, Kiddytown, and the Miss Westgate Restaurant.[12] Furthermore, there were businesses such as a floral shop, a hardware store, a service centre, and the Clark Dairy Bar. 

To celebrate Westgate’s opening, from May 11th to 14th, 1955, visitors were amazed to see uniformed parking attendants directing traffic.[13] They used their own parking lot cleaner and worked to clear the traffic jam, which had backed up all the way down Carling Avenue.[14] Advertised by the Ottawa Citizen as “another first in Ottawa’s march to the future,” Westgate opened like a gala.[15] Famous attendees, such as TV singers Shirley Harmer and George Murray, joined.[16] A motorcade fashion show travelled from Reitman’s on Rideau Street to Westgate, celebrating the latest trends. As a modern touch to the centre’s futuristic marketing, Canadian Aviation Electronics displayed a radioactive gamma-ray device in place of the usual ribbon-cutting ceremony.[17] 

Community members, families, merchants, and the media were impressed by the suburban shopping centre. Reflecting this excitement, The Ottawa Journal reported, “The west end has never seen a show like it.”[18] Similarly, Steinberg’s highlighted a “gay, wonderful young at heart feeling.”[19] Following its grand opening, Westgate Shopping Centre was an instant success, dominating headlines for years. Carling Avenue grew so busy after Westgate opened that about 15,000 cars passed through its parking lot every other Saturday.[20] Consequently, by 1956, Ottawa planned to extend Carling Avenue, replacing streetcar tracks with bus service. Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitton widened the road, adding two roadways and a bus station at Civic Hospital. 

Westgate, Ottawa’s first shopping centre, shares qualities with the work of the renowned Austrian architect and planner Victor Gruen. Gruen envisioned postwar shopping centres as communal hubs, and Westgate’s development mirrored some aspects of this vision for suburban life.[21] This alignment with Gruen’s vision is evident in Westgate’s location, function, status, and social life, all factors that promoted the pleasant, convenient environment he imagined for suburban shopping centres. While Westgate was conceived by local real estate developers, wealthy merchants, and established architects as a commercial space, its impact extended well beyond financial success.  

[1] James Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” The Historical Society of Ottawa, accessed October 17, 2025. https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[2] Andrew Waldron, “The West End,” in Exploring the Capital: An Architectural Guide to the Ottawa Region (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2017), 350.

[3] Dave Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” Kitchissippi Times (Ottawa, ON), May 20, 2015, https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[4] Marie- Josée Therrien, “Changing Trends in the Canadian ‘Mallscape’ of the 1950s and 1960s,” Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 36, no. 2 (2011): 14, http://hdl.handle.net/10222/65285. 

[5] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[6] Therrien, “Changing Trends in the Canadian ‘Mallscape’ of the 1950s and 1960s,” 14-15.

[7] Charlie Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” Kitchissippi Times (Ottawa, ON), October 31, 2025, https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[8] Waldron, “The West End,” 350.

[9] Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[10] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[11] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[12] Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[13] Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[14] Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[15] Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[16] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[17] Allston, “Did you know that Ottawa’s first mall was built in Kitchissippi?” https://kitchissippi.com/westgate-shopping-centre/. 

[18] Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[19] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce. 

[20] Senack, “Ottawa’s oldest mall closes today after 70 years,” https://kitchissippi.com/goodbye-to-westgate-a-look-at-the-malls-historic-past/. 

[21] Powell, “Temples of Commerce,” https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/important-public-and-private-buildings-in-the-city/temples-of-commerce.