Thursday Doors – September 5, 2019

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). 

Butterflies, Dinosaurs, & Doors at the Canadian Museum of Nature – Ottawa, Ontario

This past long weekend we took a road trip to the nation’s capital Ottawa. While there we decided to drop in and visit a building we had driven past a number of times before, that had always caught my eye, The Canadian Museum of Nature.

Formerly known as The National Museum of Natural Sciences the main campus of the museum, the one we visited, is housed in the magnificent Victoria Memorial Museum Building.

The building’s architectural style is referred to as Scottish Baronial.

Basically it’s a mix of medieval castle and with symmetrical Gothic, Romanesque, and Tudor influences. It was built between 1905 and 1912 using locally quarried sandstone.

Despite the old world style, the building was one of the first of its kind to incorporate animals and plants found in Canada into its design.

Note the moose head, upper right

Beaver

Only a few years after opening the building was called into service as the temporary/emergency home of Canada’s Parliament which was destroyed by fire in 1916. After the reconstructed Parliament re-opened in 1920 the building returned to its original vocation, undergoing several significant renovations over the years. The last renovations in 2010 included a stunning glass tower that houses a scale model of the moon.

Outside view of the tower

Inside view of the tower including the moon

As for me: a chance to stroll through a 100+ year old structure,

see some woolly mammoths and some dinosaurs,

dead ones of course…

check out the butterfly exhibit,

live ones of course…

and discover some lovely doors…

Inside the butterfly greenhouse

all on a lazy holiday Monday?

I’d say: It was my kinda day!

As always, thank you for looking 🙂

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