page_title: Pointe-Saint-Charles
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Pointe-Saint-Charles / History
caption_attribution_description: Pont-Victoria enjambeant le Fleuve Saint-Laurent, Montréal, Québec
context_page_description: Pointe-Saint-Charles is a neighborhood in the borough of Le Sud-Ouest in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Historically a working-class area, the creation of many new housing units, the recycling of industrial buildings into business incubators, lofts, and condos, the 2002 re-opening of the canal as a recreation and tourism area, the improvement of public spaces, and heritage enhancement have all helped transform the neighborhood and attract new residents. Community groups continue to be pro-active in areas related to the fight against poverty and the improvement of living conditions.
context_section_description: Twenty years after the founding of Ville-Marie (Montreal) by Paul Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve in 1642, he granted an area on the pointe Saint-Charles, extending into the St. Lawrence, to St. Marguerite Bourgeoys for agricultural use by the Congrégation de Notre-Dame. The sisters operated a sharecropping farm (métairie) on the land. From an area of about 30 arpents (about 10 hectares), the farm reached an area of 200 arpents (about 68 hectares) by the mid-18th century. The nuns built the Maison Saint-Gabriel, the only remaining trace of their farm and one of the oldest buildings in Montreal, on their property in 1698. Their farming activity only ceased altogether in the 1950s.
  Until the mid-19th century, the area was chiefly agricultural. Urbanization began with the enlargement of the Lachine Canal (completed in 1848), as the transportation access and water power attracted industry to the whole of what is now the Sud-Ouest borough. The installation of railways and the construction of the Victoria Bridge (1854–1860) also attracted workers and spurred development. The then-owners, the Sulpician Order, divided the area into lots and auctioned them off starting in 1853, with the Grand Trunk Railway purchasing a large area for use as a railyard.
  Numerous workers moved in, including numerous Irish immigrants as well as French-Canadians, English, Scots and in the early 20th century, the Poles, Ukrainians and the Lithuanians. Irish-Catholics and French-Canadians lived side-by-side in the Point, each community building its own Catholic church, also side-by-side on Centre Street: Saint Gabriel's Parish (completed 1895) and Église Saint-Charles (completed 1905). The Polish Community was given permission by the Archdiocese of Montreal to build a church on Centre Street between Richmond and Montmorency Streets, Holy Trinity Church, which is still attended by the community from near and far. The Ukrainian Community also still returns to the Point to worship at Holy Ghost Parish on the corner of Grand Trunk and Shearer Streets. Numerous Protestant churches were also built during the late 1800s including Grace Anglican Church (built 1871 enlarged 1892), St. Mathew Presbyterian Church (built 1891, destroyed by fire in 1977), Centenary Methodist Church (built 1891, now a Seventh-Day Adventist church), and a Baptist church at the corner of Liverpool and Wellington streets (built 1900 and now used as a Sikh temple). Today, Pointe-Saint-Charles is considered the heart of historic Irish Montreal, with street names like Rue Saint-Patrick, Rue d'Hibernia, Place Dublin, and Rue des Irlandais testifying to that heritage.
  By the 1860s, the area was a busy industrial neighbourhood and one of Canada's first neighborhoods offering housing to industrial workers. Notably, the development on Grand Trunk Row (today Rue Sébastopol) introduced the stacked "duplex," based on British working-class housing, that would come to be so typical of neighbourhoods throughout Montreal. Building continued in the central Rushbrooke/Hibernia area until 1910.
  The area straddled the Montreal city limit, and the part outside was set up as the village of Saint-Gabriel in 1874 and annexed to Montreal in 1887, becoming a city ward. In the early 20th century, Pointe-Saint-Charles was made up of two city wards: St. Gabriel, to the west, and St. Ann, to the east, which also included Griffintown and extended as far as McGill Street in what is now Old Montreal. The two were divided by the former city limit line, passing from the basin on the Lachine Canal just west of the St. Gabriel Locks to the riverbank just south of what is now the end of Ash Avenue.
  Like the rest of the area around the Lachine Canal, the neighbourhood went into a long decline in the 1960s, caused by the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and sealed by the closure of the Lachine Canal. The destruction of Goose Village and the construction of the Bonaventure Autoroute further impacted the area. Still, the neighbourhood reacted to the difficult times by forming bands of social solidarity. For example, the Clin
caption: Victoria Bridge over St. Lawrence River
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