L'Esplanade Laurier is an office complex in downtown Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. It consists of two 23-story towers, a three story underground parking garage and a podium containing a two-story shopping mall. The entire structure is clad in white carrara

Carrara

Carrara is a city and comune in the province of Massa-Carrara , notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence....

 marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

, making it clearly stand out of from the other towers in the city. At 88 meters tall, the two towers are the ninth and tenth tallest in the city. It is located at the intersection of major Ottawa streets, Laurier Avenue between Bank Street

Bank Street (Ottawa)

Bank Street is the major north-south road in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It runs south from Wellington Street in downtown Ottawa, south through the neighbourhoods of Centretown, The Glebe, Old Ottawa South, Alta Vista, Hunt Club, and then through the villages of Blossom Park, Leitrim, South...

 and O'Connor Street

O'Connor Street

O'Connor Street is a downtown arterial road in Ottawa, Canada. It is a north-south route, operating one way southbound, providing a key thoroughfare parallel to Bank Street....

. The lower two levels of the buildings stretch across the entire block and house a small shopping arcade.

The building was built by Olympia and York

Olympia and York

Olympia & York was once a major international property development firm based in Canada. The firm built major financial office complexes like Canary Wharf in London, the World Financial Center in New York City and First Canadian Place in Toronto...

 in 1973-1975, and was intended to be occupied by federal government workers. It was one of the last office complexes of that era purpose-built by the private sector for the federal government, as the government itself project-managed complexes constructed in the late 1970s, including the C.D. Howe Building and Place du Portage

Place du Portage

right|thumb|250px|The Place du Portage complex facing the Ottawa River.Place du Portage is a large office complex in the Hull sector of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, situated along Boulevard Maisonneuve and facing the Ottawa River...

. Today, l'Esplanade Laurier contains the main offices of the Department of Finance

Department of Finance (Canada)

-Function:Department of Finance Canada operates under the Minister of Finance. Its purpose is to ensure a healthy Canadian economy by developing polices of sound economic management and providing expert advice to the government....

, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and the Public Service Commission. On the Mezzanine Level there is a Service Canada office that provides one-stop service for the public to many government services. The building houses over 2000 public servants. The shops and food court

Food court

A food court is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dining. Food courts may be found in shopping malls and airports, and in various regions may be a standalone development...

 in the mall on the lower levels mostly cater to the office workers.

In the early 1990s, a slab of carrara marble fell from the building podium. Subsequently most of the marble slabs from the lower levels of the building were removed and replaced with white painted plasterboard, still in place today. In 2002, the building was closed for several days after an accident caused hundreds of liters of ethylene glycol

Ethylene glycol

Ethylene glycol is an organic compound widely used as an automotive antifreeze and a precursor to polymers. In its pure form, it is an odorless, colorless, syrupy, sweet-tasting liquid...

to enter the water supply. After the system was flushed the towers returned to operation.

The building is currently managed by Rosdev Group, an organization that has been criticized for poor maintenance and mismanagement.