This comparison of Bank Street in Ottawa is interesting on many fronts.  First, from a photographic point of view, it is one of the rare archival photos (actually, it is the first one we have ever done) that was shot with a long focal length; 200 mm in this case.

Two churches, the Metropolitan Bible Church and the United Centretown Church occupy the vast majority of the left-hand side of the archival photo.  The United Church is still up but the Central occupies the site of the former Metropolitan Bible Church which has integrated (half of) the facade in a pretty nice fashion with the new glass and red brick building.  The three phases of the Central, to which will be added a forth phase, definitely gave a second breath to the area of Centretown south of Gladstone Avenue by adding a couple of hundreds of units and several services like a pharmacy and an LCBO.  Rumor has it that a Farm Boy will open where Tommy Lefrebvre is currently which would be an important addition to this area.

As for the area north of Gladstone, it stayed almost unchanged. That being said, the 3-story building at the corner of Florence and Bank Streets has been destroyed by a fire in 2005.