NOTRE DAME STREET IN 1803
The portal of the First Parish Church is seen blocking the street. It was necessary to go around the church to continue along Notre Dame to the Quebec Gate. The gable of the Seminary is seen on St. Francis Xavier Street. Between it and the portal is the cemetery gate.
“From authentic sources,” says Sandham in his History of Montreal, Past and Present, “we learn that between the years of 1805 and 1816 there were sixty-four stone houses erected within the old gates. At the latter date there were forty-five wooden houses, of which four were erected by government during the American war. In 1814 seven stone and four wooden houses were built; in 1815 twenty-three of stone and twenty-one of wood; and in 1816 sixty stone and wooden houses were in the course of erection.”
In the meantime the city was developing its approaches[1] and special commissions were appointed. An old almanack printed at Quebec in 1815 mentions: “Trustees for improving, ordering and keeping in repair the road from the city of Montreal to Lachine through the wood.” (Honourable James McGill, Honourable John Richardson, Joseph Papineau, Isaac W. Clark, Louis Gugy and Jean Marie Mondelet.) The commissioners for the removal of the old walls of Montreal were J. McGill, J. Richardson, Jean Mondelet and L. Chaboillez. (Lachennais Bridge, Canadian Numismatic and Antiquarian Journal, Series N, Vol. I, pg. 881.)
A traveler visiting the city in 1819 describes the houses and streets thus: “The first impression of the city is very pleasing. In its turrets and steeples glittering with tin; in its thickly built streets stretching about one-and-a-half miles along the river and rising gently from it; in its environs ornamented with country houses and green fields; in the noble expanse of the St. Lawrence sprinkled with islands; in its foaming and noisy rapid and in the bold ridge of the mountain, which forms a back-ground to the city; we recognize all the features necessary to a rich and magnificent landscape and perceive among these indications decisive proofs of a growing inland emporium. The streets of the city are narrow except some of the new ones. The principal ones are St. Paul, which is the bustling business street, near the river, and Notre Dame, on higher ground, more quiet, more genteel and better built. The latter street is twenty-five feet wide and three-quarters of a mile long. Many of the houses are constructed of rough stone coarsely pointed or daubed with mortar and have certainly an unsightly appearance. Many of the stores and dwellings have iron plate doors and window shutters, fortified by iron frames, as a precaution against fire as well as robbery. An act of ’59, (George IV Cap. 8), obliges householders of Montreal whose houses have wooden roofs to whitewash or to paint them every two years.”
Previous to 1827 St. Paul, St. Francois Xavier, St. Sacrement, Notre Dame and others of our present business streets contained the private residences of many of our first citizens where stores and warehouses are now only to be seen. Not half a dozen of our merchants and prominent men lived out of the old city proper, viz. from McGill Street to Dalhousie Street and back to Craig Street, which was its northern boundary. At that time and even later St. James Street and its seven galleries, a terrace of one-story buildings, were the fashionable rendezvous of the military. The windows of the stores were little larger than those of the ordinary houses, but in 1839 more modern display windows were beginning to appear. The iron shutters for protection which are still to be seen on some of the old houses even in 1914, were then giving place to more elegant ones of wood. Puddles were allowed to remain in the street. The roads were very dusty in the dry weather and very muddy in the wet. To remedy the former sprinkling carts were recommended and for the latter wood paving. The streets were still badly lighted for although the old oil lamps were being superseded by gas, the city was not generally lighted.
During all this period under the justices of the peace, it may be remarked, that they had the power to make certain assessment for defraying the necessary expenses of the city and to enact and enforce such by-laws for its regulation as were not inconsistent with the statutes of the realm.
MONTREAL IN 1839
Writing in 1839 in “Hochelaga Depicta,” Mr. Newton Bosworth gives many interesting side lights of the civic improvement of the time preceding the municipality.
“An act passed the Provincial Legislature in 1832, forming Montreal into a Corporation and transferring the authority for the Magistrates to the corporate body; but in 1836, the Act of Incorporation having expired, the Government again passed into the hands of the Justices of the Peace.