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Canada's first Parliament Buildings, built in 1859--65 and destroyed by fire in 1916, were the nation's most prominent symbol of national identity and its most celebrated public space. Built into its fabric was an exclusively masculine definition of public persons, one which, at the end of the nineteenth century, women challenged in both subtle and overt ways. / This research examines the design of the Parliament Buildings as a multi-faceted building type, a complex mix of domestic, office and legislative design where both public and "private" spaces intersected. It overlays official documentation of the buildings with a rich variety of sources---archival photographs, newspaper articles and women's columns, letters, journals---to show how women transgressed the architectural prescription which placed them on the political periphery in the Ladies' Gallery, as observers and objects of observation. These sources show that, in fact, women altered and created spaces and initiated influential networks of their own both in and outside of the Parliament Buildings. By illuminating the primacy of the "political hostess," this research argues that women were not relegated to the sidelines, but appropriated---and practiced politics from within---the most privileged of spaces. / This methodology, by examining the interior organization and actual use of the Parliament Buildings, opens new possibilities for the study of legislative buildings and public buildings in general as dynamic systems of relationships rather than uni-dimensional building types. By showing how women challenged the spatial demarcations of gender and power and transformed the meanings associated with parliamentary and public spaces not initially intended for their use, we can draw a picture of the larger role women in Canada played as "public architects."

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