Montréal
THE RISE OF LE MILLE CARRÉ Now a part of Montréal’s downtown, what is referred to as the Golden Square Mile encompasses 24 streets bounded by Côte-des-Neiges/Guy, Pine, University/ Robert Bourassa and René Lévesque. Ironically, the neighborhood didn’t acquire its ostentatious nickname until its ‘golden age’ had faded, when 1950s real estate developers connected the area’s formerly shady streets lined with opulent Victorian houses with a burgeoning and expanding central business district. From 1850 to 1940, however, streets were lined with mansions, each more opulent than the next. Seeking spacious sites for their country homes, Montréal’s business titans developed the farmland of the slopes of Mount Royal north of Sherbrooke Street, utilizing a Victorian mix of revival styles that included Neo- Classical, Romanesque, Neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau. It’s even said that the pride of Montreal — Parc du Mont- Royal, inaugurated in 1876 and designed by Frederick Law Olmsted of Central Park fame — was the result of bourgeois locals fretting about vanishing greenery. The area then known as ‘New Town’ or ‘Uptown’ quickly became the seat of Montréal’s impressive wealth, with the owners and operators of the majority of Canadian rail, shipping, timber, mining, fur and banking industries among its populace. Remarkably, between the peak years of 1870 and 1900, a group of 50 residents — mostly businessmen of Scottish descent — held at least 70% of Canada’s wealth. DECLINE, DOWNTOWN BOOM & PRESERVATION The dawn of the 20th-century was a gilded age for ‘Square Milers’. Transportation magnates benefitted from Canada’s immigration boom and westward expansion, while Montréal-based companies amassed great fortunes from British capital investment. Cracks in the area’s a¹uence began to appear after World War I when, as noted in MacKay L. Smith’s Montreal’s Golden Square Mile: A Historical Perspective, “Many of the sons who would have taken over their parents’ homes never came back from World War I. The same thing happened after World War II.”
The Great Depression, an introduction of income tax and an exodus of families to Toronto and New York continued the area’s decline, but it was mostly the movement of the city’s financial and commercial activity from an increasingly desolate Old Montréal to the Golden Square Mile that changed it from a residential neighborhood to a business center. Today, less than 30% of the mansions remain standing in what is Montréal’s downtown and only a handful are still used as private residences. But that number could have been far lower. As often happens, a single demolition provoked the rise of a local preservation movement. Built in 1869, the Italianate-style Van Horne Mansion on Sherbrooke Street was demolished in 1973 despite public outcry, spurring the formation of the city’s first preservation group, Save Montréal. Two years later, a Canadian architect and philanthropist named Phyllis Lambert founded Heritage Montréal. Lambert would go on to save the 19th-century Shaughnessy House – just south of the Golden Square Mile – from demolition and make it a part of the unique Canadian Centre for Architecture. Subsequent preservation e«orts have ensured the distinctive facades of Scottish sandstone and local granite have remained among the glistening towers of downtown Montréal.
HISTORICAL SITES TO SEE
RAVENSCRAG Commissioned by shipping magnate Sir Hugh Allan, this palatial, Italian Renaissance-style structure built between 1861 and 1864 was once the largest private home in the city. Looming over Montréal at the top of Peel Street, it features an observation tower from which Allan watched the comings and goings of his vessels in the harbor below. It’s now part of McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine.
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