Exploring Montreal’s vibrant downtown urban district

Montreal Downtown District

Discover the new Twentieth Century downtown district of Montreal.

Since the late nineteenth century, the city of Montreal has established itself as an urban entity, playing a major role in social, cultural, and commercial affairs.

Framed by Guy, the Gauchetiere, Saint-Urbain and Sherbrooke, Montreal includes the central businesses previously located in Old Montreal.

The architectural diversity of historic buildings reveals the richness of the area and the multiplicity of influences and functions.

Montreal’s characteristic skyscrapers dominate the universities, department stores, shopping malls, railway terminals, apartments, luxury residences, offices, bars, cafes, colleges, and public places around them.

The city center is now the business sector of the most efficient and largest underground city in the world. It not only hosts major festivals but also boasts institutions, museums, theaters and monuments, giving Montreal its high cultural status.

This is the core business, financial, and cultural center of the city.

Montreal Downtown District History

1650 to 1760

Constructed during the seventeenth century by an Amerindian tribe, Fort de la Montagne, hosted various Christianized nations making a pact with the French. First located south of Mount-Royal, the mission was transferred to Sault-au-Recollect in 1696.

The Sulpician then advanced this sector, creating orchards, farming, wineries, and a stone quarry. The woods and fields of the Saint-Antoine occupied the location of the future downtown district.

The site is protected from the winds of the northwest. This is preferred due to the high fertility of the land and inclination toward the sun.

1761 to 1840

The current Old Montreal saw its population grow rapidly after the capture of Montreal by the English.

The wall around Montreal was demolished between 1801 and 1821, resulting in the expansion of the urban center to the west. A portion of the land that makes up the current downtown district was occupied at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century by various cemeteries.

Another part belonged to a new and rich community made up of the princes of fur traders and international traders. McGill Frobisher, McGillivray McTavish Desrivieres, Guy, and others made the site a resort composed of gardens, houses, and ponds.

The path of the Saint-Antoine form the main thoroughfare, Sherbrooke Street, Saint-Catherine, and Dorchester Streets are added in1840.

1841 to 1881

The New Town of Montreal

In 1840, a few wealthy merchants arranged with architects to have their land subdivided to create an economy class. This creates a new city.

The form and extent of subdivisions vary with investor and architect, but a common trait consists of an orthogonal grid of townhouses with a terrace (a monumental facade for a homogeneous group of houses) and rear alley.

Following the landing of new residents from Anglo-Protestant communities, new Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist communities are established. During this time a new synagogue appeared, as well as a new Catholic cathedral, Marie-Reine-du-Monde in the Latin Quarter, which replaced a cathedral lost to fire in 1852.

A couple of years later, the Grey Nuns moved into the new city center. To improve the public health of this growing sector, cemeteries were moved to the Mount Royal.

The first trams of Montreal City appear on Ste-Catherine and Saint-Laurent Boulevard in 1864. These two arteries become powerful commercial magnets.

1882 to 1938

The railway system is complex with competing networks, Grand Trunk and CP. The latter sees the terminus of Windsor Station, which holds the headquarters of the company.

Not far away is the exclusive Windsor Hotel. The city center then becomes the true capital urban railroad center of Canada.

According to Morgan’s in 1891, the major department stores and shops of the Rue Saint-Jacques and Victoria Square move close to a rich bourgeois clientele, living in newly installed sumptuous residences.

Starting in 1900, high-class apartment rentals are built for a wealthy class that wants to stay in a dense, well located, and popular area. These apartment buildings are elegant and attractive, offering the same common services found in hotels (telephone, elevator service, etc.).

The Museum of Fine Arts Arts was created first, followed by theaters, private clubs, new churches, banks, and elegant luxury shops emerge on Sherbrooke Street and the surrounding area.

Transforming the landscape of the city in the early twentieth century were skyscrapers erected around the Square Dorchester at approximately Phillips Square and down Bleury Street. These skyscrapers include the Dominion Square Building, Sun Life building, the apartments Acadia, Ritz-Carlton, Unity Building, and many others downtown.

After the territory of the new city center consolidates, the crisis of 1929 seriously affects the economy, especially trade in the downtown district of Toronto. The crisis quickly takes over the city.

In the early twentieth century, the competition between the railways is still strong: CP redevelops and expands Windsor Station from 1910 to 1912, while the Canadian National and Canadian Northern begin work on Central Station in 1938. The tertiary sector is growing in this electrified area since 1886.

1939 to 2008

A new Contemporary City

Following lean years, the city saw a period of reconstruction. In the wake of the automobile expansion, Boulevard Rene-Levesque was expanded in 1943. During the late 1950s, buildings were constructed over 10 stories high. During the nineteen-sixties, important infrastructure appeared.

The opening of the metro sector facilitates allows access to the full Canadian National Railway Station project in 1950, the Queen Elizabeth Hotel (1958) and the Place Ville Marie in 1962.

The presence of the latter initiates a movement that leads to the development of the inner city (Montreal underground), a groundbreaking system of tunnels connecting several huge buildings, stations, cultural institutions, restaurants, offices, and metro stations.

The downtown district extends from the Forum of Montreal (now Bell Center) to Place des Arts (now Entertainment District). The headquarters of Hydro-Quebec and Complexe Desjardins, along with large rental buildings are emerging.

The new Quartier des Spectacles (Entertainment District), numerous museums and galleries, retail stores, offices, stores, and hotels now attract Montrealers, such as workers, tourists, and people from the suburbs.

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