page_title: Notman House
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Notman House / History
caption_attribution_description: English: William Notman, photographer, Montreal, QC, 1866-67 Français&#160;: William Notman, photographe, Montréal, QC, 1866-1867
context_page_description: Notman House is a historic building at 51 Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal, Quebec, near the Golden Square Mile. Completed in 1845 for Sir William Collis Meredith, the house takes its name from the celebrated photographer, William Notman, who lived there with his family from 1876 until his death in 1891. The house is the only surviving residence of its era on Sherbrooke Street, and one of Quebec's few residential examples of Greek Revival architecture. It was classified as an historical monument and added to the Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec on December 8, 1979.
context_section_description: The house was built for William Collis Meredith, the future Chief Justice of the Superior Court for the Province of Quebec. In 1843, Meredith, then a 31-year-old bachelor, commissioned John Wells to build him a new home beyond the confines of Old Montreal. Wells was then one of the best-known English architects in Montreal, whose work included the Head Office of the Bank of Montreal, Prince of Wales Terrace, and the Sainte Anne Market that housed the Canadian Parliament at Montreal until it was burnt down in the riots of 1849. 
  Meredith's new home was completed in 1845 within la Côte-à-Baron on Sherbrooke Street, then just a quiet country lane. The Meredith house was approached by a horseshoe driveway that was afterwards pushed back as Sherbrooke Street became a main thoroughfare. Meredith's house neighboured Belmont Hall, the Molson family home that once stood on the site today occupied by the gas station seen on the other side of Clark Street.
  In 1849, a judicial promotion took Meredith to Quebec City. He leased the house to several prominent Montrealers including Thomas Evans Blackwell, President of the Grand Trunk Railway, before selling it to a grandson of John Molson - Alexander Molson (1830-1897) - who had grown up at the neighbouring Belmont Hall. In 1876, Molson sold the house to William Notman, the celebrated Scottish photographer whose collection of over 450,000 photographs form the basis of the Notman Photographic Archives kept at the McCord Museum in Montreal. It is from him that the house takes its name today, and he lived here with his family until his death in 1891.
  After Notman's death, the property was purchased by Sir George Alexander Drummond, a wealthy philanthropist and future President of the Bank of Montreal. In 1894, Drummond purchased the house in order to donate it and its land to the Anglican community of the Sisters of St. Margaret. Based on the plans of the architect Sir Andrew Thomas Taylor, they enlarged the house and built a hospital known as St. Margaret's Home for Incurables that was able to accommodate 50 patients. The Sisters of St. Margaret operated the hospital for almost a century until 1991, when financial responsibility for operating St. Margaret's passed from the Drummond Trusts to the Government of Quebec, and a new Centre d'Accueil St. Margaret was established at 50 Hillside Avenue in Westmount.
  In January 2011, the OSMO Foundation leased Notman House, making it available to internet entrepreneurs, early stage venture capitalists and the general public. On December 19, 2012, the OSMO Foundation acquired the property with the help of municipal, provincial and federal government grants, as well as private sponsors.
caption: The celebrated photographer William Notman, from whom the house takes its name, lived here from 1876 to 1891
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