Golden Square Mile
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The Golden Square Mile was the name of a luxurious neighbourhood at the foot of Mount Royal in the west-central section of downtown Montreal, Canada. The Square Mile, as a neighbourhood, is generally understood to have existed between 1875 and 1930, at which point, in the face of economic hardship and an increasingly desperate situation in Depression-era Montreal (along with a dawning automobile era, and a desire for more modern homes), many of the former occupants decamped for Westmount and other areas.
From roughly 1850, wealthier families began to migrate out of Montreal's increasingly congested port and downtown core, to settle in new suburban areas built on land formerly given to farming. Of these new areas, the most prestigious were those along the southern slopes of Mount Royal, along Sherbrooke Street west (then little more than a country road); and around McGill University. This would become the core of the Square Mile.
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[edit] Borders
In principle, the neighbourhood had precise borders measuring roughly a square mile, covering the area between Dorchester Boulevard (today's Boulevard Rene-Levesque) at the southern end, Pine Avenue at the foot of Mount Royal at the northern end, University street at the eastern end, and Guy street at the western end. In effect, however, the Square Mile covered the far smaller territory between Sherbrooke Street and Pine Avenue (between Guy and University streets), an area that covered scarcely nine streets on the north-south axis (from east to west: McTavish Street, Peel Street, Stanley Street, Drummond street, Mountain Street, Ontario Avenue (now avenue du Musee), Redpath Street, Simpson Street, and Guy Street), and three streets on the east-west axis (from south to north: Sherbrooke St. West, McGregor Street (now Avenue Dr. Penfield) and Pine Avenue).
[edit] Architecture
The architecture of the area was an eclectic mix of the Neo-classical, Neo-Gothic, Romanesque, Second Empire, Queen Anne and Art Nouveau (though other styles also figured prominently) - often within the same home. Scottish sandstone and local granite were commonly used materials, most homes had substantial grounds and atria, most streets were lined with spruce or maple trees, and generally, the most sumptuous homes were built north of McGregor.
[edit] Residents
Indisputably the economic masters of Canada, residents of the Golden Square Mile played a key role in the development of the country during the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. An often-cited (and rarely substantiated) figure holds that at its peak, around 1900, 70% of all wealth in Canada was owned by residents of the Square Mile.[citation needed] Dubious perhaps, however, the truth is that the controllers of most Canadian rail, shipping, timber, mining, fur and banking companies of any size made their homes in the Square Mile, and that it was a neighbourhood of an opulence and architectural audacity theretofore unknown in the Dominion, and never seen since.
[edit] Demolition
Most of the wealthiest residents (and their children) left during the Great Depression and after World War Two, and with the exodus, the character of the neighbourhood declined significantly. On the one hand, the old families left their former homes empty or partially-occupied, on the other hand, Sherbrooke street and Pine avenue became major arteries for automobile travel as the centre of Montreal's downtown shifted northwestward. As a result of these developments, over the twenty years following the war, many of the great mansions of the area were acquired by commercial and civic institutions and demolished or repurposed beyond all recognition. The Allen family's Ravenscrag, the Square Mile's masthead mansion at the head of McTavish street, saw its grounds converted and built upon by McGill University, and its famously sumptuous interior entirely replaced, as the Allan Memorial Institute. A similar fate befell nearly two dozen homes obtained by the university and by commercial enterprises converting the buildings for office use. For the most part, however, the old mansions were simply demolished outright and replaced with high-rise office or apartment blocks. Most famously, the Van Horne Mansion, the undisputed centre of Square Mile society for nearly 40 years, was demolished in 1973 to widespread outrage. Yet, the Van Horne mansion actually came at the tail end of a massive demolition spree between 1945 and 1975 that had changed the Square Mile radically. For example, Drummond street south of McGregor street, in 1925 a quiet, tree-lined street on which stood the Queen Anne and Neo-Gothic Drummond, Smithers, Meighen and Molson mansions (along with some seven or eight others) had, just fifty years later, become a tree-less street of concrete tower blocks. Following the establishment of a heritage protection regime at the provincial level, the architectural character of the neighbourhood stabilized, but the Golden Square Mile, the private enclave of vast wealth, privilege and authority, is forever lost.
[edit] References
- Rémillard, François; & Brian Merrett (1987). Mansions of the Golden Square Mile. Meridian Press. ISBN 2-920417-25-8.
[edit] External links
- GoldenSquareMile.com
- McGill University Architecture Library. Golden Square Mile Mansions
