only for four years, succumbing to an accidental fire on 30 December 1824. From then until 1829, the House of Assembly gathered at the newly built York General Hospital, located on the south-east corner of the block bounded by King, Adelaide, John, and Peter Streets; a move that delayed the hospital's opening until the legislative body moved on to the old Court House, which stood on the north side of King Street, between Toronto and Church Streets. In 1832, a new structure was built on Front Street, west of Simcoe Street, and served continuously as the third parliament building of Upper Canada until the province was united with Lower Canada in 1840, after which the joined assembly was relocated by the then Governor General, Charles Poulett Thomson, Baron Sydenham, to the general hospital building in Kingston. The House of Assembly moved in and out of the Front Street building over the ensuing years, relocating for brief periods to Montreal and Quebec City, even at one point adopting a perambulation system that saw parliament relocate between Toronto and Quebec every four years. With mounting displeasure over the transient nature of the Canadian parliament, and an inability on the part of politicians to agree as to where to locate the legislative building, Queen Victoria was asked to make a selection; over all the other cities in the Province of Canada, she chose Bytown (later Ottawa) in 1857. Today, the site of the first parliament buildings in York is a parking lot for a car wash, a car rental company and a car dealership. Archaeological excavations at the site in 2000 undercovered evidence of the buildings. Subsequently, the property was bought by the Ontario Heritage Trust which operated a Parliament Interpretive Centre at the site from 2012–2015. The dig was covered up to await future plans for the site. Queen's Park building On 1 July 1867, however, the province joined with two others in confederation and was split into the present-day provinces of Ontario and Quebec, meaning that new legislatures were established for each of the two new provincial entities. Toronto was chosen as the capital of the former, and the legislative assembly moved back to the same Front Street property that had been home to the House of Assembly for the Province of Canada, despite the structure having been damaged by fire in 1861 and 1862. By 1880, a request was made