St. Patrick’s ‘best-kept secret’ may disappear
It’s a rare grassy oasis in downtown Montreal.
On a sunny afternoon last week, lunching office workers and residents crowded into the green space. With St. Patrick’s Basilica’s soaring tower as a backdrop, some sat on blankets, others perched on remnants of the stone foundations of a 19th-century home for the aged and homeless.
“It’s a little well-kept secret: a green garden in the middle of downtown — it’s unique and rare,” said Amélie Côté, an area resident who opposes a plan to raze most of the unofficial park.
The debate over the green space is linked to a post-secondary institution in expansion mode and a landmark church with excess land, a need for cash and plans to spruce up its decrepit surroundings, parts of which are neglected and unsightly.
St. Patrick’s, described as the heart of Montreal’s Irish population, is set to sell the green space — on de la Gauchetière St., between Beaver Hall Hill and St-Alexandre St. — and a parking lot next to the church for an undisclosed price.
The buyer: HEC Montréal, a business school affiliated with the Université de Montréal.
HEC, based in Côte-des-Neiges, plans to build a sprawling $165-million new pavilion next to St. Patrick’s so it can be closer to Montreal’s business community and better serve its growing student body. The Quebec government, which is to pay $94 million of the cost, is expected to give final approval in the next few weeks.
The stone foundations that can be seen in the green space are remnants of St. Bridget’s Asylum and Night Refuge, which opened in 1869. They are not protected by any heritage designation.
Founded by Father Patrick Dowd, St. Patrick’s longtime pastor, “the massive stone building was four storeys high,” Gazette columnist Edgar Andrew Collard wrote in 1985 of St. Bridget’s. “In front of it, along the line of the street, was a splendid fence, with iron railings between carved stone posts.
“St. Bridget’s was built to serve three purposes. It was to be a home for the aged and infirm; a shelter for young women out of work; and a night refuge for homeless and destitute wanderers, who ‘before they left in the morning were given a breakfast of bread and hot tea.’ ”
St. Bridget’s later became the Father Dowd Home for seniors. The building was torn down in the 1970s and the land was ceded to St. Patrick’s in 1985.
The property was used for parking until 1998, when it was renovated to welcome the public as a green space, with Power Corp. contributing $250,000 for landscaping and the city of Montreal agreeing to maintain it.
The green space is about 2,600 square metres. St. Patrick’s is to retain about 30 per cent of the land — the eastern portion, which is directly in front of the church and does not contain any ruins.
HEC says the new pavilion — parts of which will be five, six and eight storeys, with a total of 125 underground parking spots — will have a “modern, distinct and timeless architectural identity.” No part of the pavilion will be higher than the basilica.
In a description of the project, the school says the “portion of the building next to the church has a more organic feel, thanks to its fluidity and its facades opposite the church, presenting it with a light, reflective face consisting of glass in various shades of white.”
The basilica, for its part, said in a newsletter to parishioners last week that “the size, emplacement, height and exterior design of HEC’s pavilion have all been addressed to our satisfaction.”
The church has been trying to sell the land since the 1980s, with various proposals for hotels and condos either falling through or being rejected by the parish.
“An educational institution is much better suited to our mission than other potential purchases,” the newsletter said. It noted that the basilica is not selling any of the land purchased in 1843 to build the church.
The school has said it hopes to start preliminary work on the 24,000-square-metre pavilion this year, with completion slated for August 2021. Three buildings HEC already owns on Beaver Hall are to be demolished.
HEC is awaiting Quebec cabinet approval this spring. “We’re expecting the green light very soon — in the coming weeks,” said HEC spokesperson Marie-Pierre Hamel.
To allow HEC to start preliminary work, the church is to close the parking lot to the public on May 31, though parishioners will be allowed to continue to use it on weekends for the time being. Details on the closure of the green space are expected to be announced soon.
Living across the street from the green space, Amélie Côté has grown to appreciate it as a valuable asset in the neighbourhood as more and more condo highrises go up.
HEC’s new pavilion would “take up far too much of a space that’s a park with mature trees,” Côté said. “I wonder why they can’t find a better solution,” such as building on the big new Outremont campus that the Université de Montréal is developing.
“It’s important to keep green spaces where people in the neighbourhood can meet and relax,” Côte added, noting trees also help improve downtown air quality. She is also worried about an increase in traffic on de la Gauchetière due to the pavilion’s underground parking.
Côté said she attended a public meeting by HEC last fall but by then plans had been drawn up and the project was presented as a fait accompli.
“This is basically a public park” in an area dominated by concrete and asphalt, said Phil Chu, who lives two blocks from the green space. “If you show up on a nice day, it’s full of residents and people who work around here, sitting, chilling, chit-chatting.”
He said the city should step in and save the lawned area, noting the only other nearby public spaces — Square Victoria and Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle — don’t qualify as green spaces because they don’t have grass.
Chu noted the city of Montreal recognized the site’s value by including it as an attraction on its new Promenade Fleuve-Montagne walkway. On the city website, the role St. Bridget’s played among anglophone Montreal Catholics is highlighted and the “green esplanade” is described as “an island of coolness hidden among the towers of the city centre.”
Chu wrote to his city councillor, Robert Beaudry, in January to complain about the HEC project.
In an emailed response, Beaudry noted the basilica will be preserved and the green space in front of the church will be redesigned and will remain open to the public. He said HEC’s plan must pass through several steps before Ville-Marie borough can approve it.
Beaudry did not respond to requests for comment from the Montreal Gazette. A December borough document indicates elected officials will review the project in detail when HEC applies for a construction permit.
Hamel said no zoning change is required for the project.
She said the school consulted neighbours and made some changes to the project in response.
For example, the building will now be set back from de la Gauchetière so sight lines to the basilica can be maintained, and the configuration of the underground parking and delivery zone was changed to reduce noise and the chances of traffic backing up on de la Gauchetière. She noted HEC is eliminating a heat island by getting rid of the parking lot.
St. Patrick’s has been negotiating with HEC since 2011 and a preliminary deal was signed in 2016.
The proceeds of the land sale will be endowed and “used indefinitely into the future to help defray the (church’s) expenses,” said Peter O’Brien, a warden at the basilica.
As the basilica put it in its newsletter: “Our future will be more secure and we will no longer be dependent on the operation of a parking lot.”
The 70-car lot — once the location of St. Patrick’s orphanage for Irish orphans — seems out of place next to the grand church.
Opened on St. Patrick’s Day in 1847, the basilica is designated a federal national historic site and a provincial heritage building. It is known for its French Gothic Revival architecture, its large scale (seating for more than 1,700 people), its prominent rose window, and the support it provided during the influx of Irish immigrants in the 19th century.
St. Patrick’s property is on a slope.
When the parking lots next to and in front of the church were created, retaining walls were built between the church and de la Gauchetière, creating two levels. Stairs lead from the street to the church. Some of the retaining walls are crumbling and the view of the church is obscured by vegetation and the stairs.
O’Brien said a landscape architect has been hired to study options. They may include removing the retaining walls and recreating a graceful serpentine path that once ran from de la Gauchetière to the church.
The church hopes the city will help defray the cost of that new green space. “If we do something with the city, one of their conditions is that it be open to the public and we’re quite happy with that,” O’Brien said.
This is basically a public park” in an area dominated by concrete and asphalt. If you show up on a nice day, it’s full of residents and people who work around here.
“Having a more dignified front garden to the basilica would be a great improvement,” said Dinu Bumbaru, policy director at Heritage Montreal.
But he said he has concerns about plans to build over the ruins of St. Bridget’s.
“That building was rather interesting and if it was still standing we would probably do every effort we could to not demolish it,” Bumbaru said.
The ruins help tell the story of Montreal’s Irish community and the role played by the Catholic Church in the city’s history, said Bumbaru, who has urged HEC to highlight the remnants of the foundations in the new pavilion.
The basilica looked into St. Bridget’s foundations and found them not to be of historical, cultural or archeological value, O’Brien said. “It’s a fluke that they’re still there — we came very close to bulldozing them back in the 1990s,” he said.
Hamel, HEC’s spokesperson, said St. Bridget’s will be commemorated but details have not been worked out. “We plan to save the foundation stones and highlight them, perhaps by reconstructing portions of walls.”