Description of Historic Place

The Junior Ranks Quarters building, also known as Building T-115, is located on the parade square at Canadian Forces Base Borden. The stucco-clad building is a large structure with a flat roof behind a low parapet wall. The primary elevation features a projecting central portico with six pillars, behind which a recessed principal entrance comprises three pairs of wooden paneled doors. The designation is confined to the footprint of the building.

Heritage Value

The Junior Ranks Quarters is a Recognized Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations, and its architectural and environmental value.

Historical Value
The Junior Ranks Quarters is associated with the massive construction and modernization program undertaken by the Department of National Defence (DND) at the end of the Second World War. More specifically, it is associated with the creation of permanent peacetime armed forces as well as the expansion and transformation of the military services to meet specific national commitments in the early years of the Cold War. This barracks block was an early component of the post-Second World War expansion at the base built to accommodate a wide variety of new housing.

Architectural Value
The Junior Ranks Quarters is a good example of a military building that combines architectural modernism and functionalism in a durable and economical form. Characterized by its symmetrical plan, flat roof and horizontal emphasis, the overall effect of the building is of a modernist hybrid of neo-classical formalism and Prairie-style accents. It was a project developed by DND staff as an exemplar for the new standards of improved accommodations that followed the Second World War.

Environmental Value
The Junior Ranks Quarters maintains an unchanged relationship to its site and is compatible with the present character of its military setting at Canadian Forces Base Borden. The building is familiar at the base.

Sources: Canadian Forces Base Borden, Ontario, Federal Heritage Building Review Office Building Report (SCR) 94-088; Junior Ranks Quarters, Building T-115, Canadian Forces Base Borden, Ontario, Heritage Character Statement, 94-088.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Junior Ranks Quarters should be respected.

Its modern style and functionalism, for example: the symmetrical plan and horizontally emphasized massing of the building; the symmetrical main elevation, with articulated corner accents and the emphasized and elaborated principal frontage, with its projecting portico and recessed entrance; the general horizontal emphasis on all elevations, reinforced by the flat roofscape and parapets and the wrap-around continuity of the projecting belt courses.

The manner in which the Junior Ranks Quarters maintains an unchanged relationship to its site, is compatible with its military setting and is a familiar building at Canadian Forces Base Borden, as evidenced by: its ongoing relationship to its site on the western frontage of an open parade-square lawn; its overall design, scale and materials which maintain a relationship to the matching building T-114 and are compatible with its grouping of similar buildings at the base; its visibility vis-à-vis its scale and location which makes it a familiar building at the base.

Heritage Character Statement

Disclaimer - The heritage character statement was developed by FHBRO to explain the reasons for the designation of a federal heritage building and what it is about the building that makes it significant (the heritage character). It is a key reference document for anyone involved in planning interventions to federal heritage buildings and is used by FHBRO in their review of interventions.

Reasons for Designation

Building T-115, Junior Ranks Quarters (Congo Road) is a “Recognized” Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations, and its architectural and environmental values.

Historical value:
Constructed in 1952 to plans prepared in 1950, building T-115 at CFB Borden is associated with the massive construction and modernization program undertaken by the Department of National Defence for all military services after the Second World War. The two primary themes for this association are (1) the creation of permanent peacetime armed forces, and (2) the expansion and transformation of the military services to meet specific national commitments in the early years of the Cold War. This barracks block, part of a series of quarters buildings along the western edge of the permanently settled portion of CFB Borden, was an early component of the post-WWII expansion of the base to accommodate a wide variety of new housing. Unlike many major structures of the era designed by private architects, this project was developed by DND staff as an exemplar of new standards of improved accommodation, based on prototypes constructed during WWII.

Architectural value:
Building T-115 is a two-storey concrete structure clad in white-painted stucco, with a flat roof behind a low parapet wall. The primary elevation, facing south to a paved parade ground, is a symmetrical composition centered on a double-height, flat-topped portico of six classically-arrayed rectangular pillars between end walls atop a short flight of steps, the whole standing out from the front wall and above the original roof line, protecting a principal entrance recessed from the front wall. Behind this colonnade, the main entrance comprises three pairs of paneled wooden doors, above which is a large panel glazed in a brick-bond pattern. The elevations comprise two storeys of horizontal window openings on continuous lintels, accented by continuous horizontal box-profile mouldings that wrap around the building, except at the recessed northeast and southeast corners, which are set back in plan with a double-height frame that folds around the two corner windows on each floor. The original multi-paned windows comprised an ABA arrangement of a fixed central unit bracketed by two narrower double-hung sash windows, since replaced by slightly varying single-pane units in functionally similar but equally spaced glazing configurations.

In plan the building is an elongated U, with a central single-storey pavilion on the half-court (north) side, and stair blocks at its ends, their flat roofs aligning to the upper mouldings of the elevations. The interior comprises double-loaded corridors with four-person rooms on both sides, and shared shower- and washrooms at the inside corners of the plan. Interior finishes are generally terrazzo floors, acoustic-tile ceilings and painted plaster walls, and with built-in wood-veneered furnishings in the barrack rooms. The original high-ceilinged central common room facing the rear half-court has been subdivided and the windows on three sides reduced. The original dominant interior feature, a full-height fieldstone-clad fireplace block projecting into the space from the east, with an off-centered fireplace on a quarry-tile plinth, no longer functions. The interior was originally finished in a mid-20th century modernist recreational style with wooden paneling.

The overall effect is a modernist hybrid of neo-classical formalism and Prairie-style accents. Along with the adjacent and almost identical junior ranks quarters (T-114), the building has not had a pitched roof added, and so its exterior retains most of the integrity of the original standard design.

Environmental value:
Backing onto flat ground at the western edge of the main settled portion of CFB Borden, the primary formal elevation of Building T-115 is centered on the northern frontage of the paved parade square defined by Congo and Korea roads. The building is surrounded by cropped lawns, with paved areas at the front entrance and part of the rear half-court. Groups of mature trees along the roadways to the southwest and northwest and scattered trimmed shrubbery relieve the formality of the building group. Along with the almost identical building T-114, this barracks is essential to the formal definition of its ensemble within the larger layout of CFB Borden.

Character-Defining Elements

The following character-defining elements of Building T-115 should be respected:

Its role as an illustration of the expansion, modernization and diversification of the Canadian military in peacetime as reflected in:

- its exemplary role for new standards of military accommodation of its period;
- its high standard of robust, durable construction;
- the formal and functional relationship of building elevations to internal arrangements; and
- its formally symmetrical orientation to its parade-ground frontage.

Its combination of architectural modernism and functionalism in a durable and economical form as manifested in:

- the symmetrical plan and horizontally emphasized massing of the building;
- the symmetrical main (east) elevation, with articulated corner accents and the emphasized and elaborated principal frontage, with its projecting portico and recessed entrance;
- the general horizontal emphasis on all elevations, reinforced by the flat roofscape and parapets, and the wrap-around continuity of the projecting belt courses; and
- the hybrid modernistic style, a distinctive combination of aspects of both Prairie style and modern neoclassicism.

The manner in which it reinforces the formally planned character of the setting as evidenced in:

- the formal symmetry of its freestanding location and orientation addressing a principal ceremonial and functional quadrangular open space in the overall base plan; and
- its relationship to a functionally and formally allied building group of different periods.