The Fur Trade at Lachine National Historic Site of Canada
Lachine, Quebec
General view
© Parks Canada Agency / Agence Parcs Canada.
Address :
1255 Saint-Joseph Boulevard, Lachine, Quebec
Recognition Statute:
Historic Sites and Monuments Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. H-4)
Designation Date:
1970-06-08
Dates:
-
1803 to 1803
(Construction)
-
1803 to 1833
(Significant)
-
1978 to 1984
(Significant)
Event, Person, Organization:
-
Northwest Company
(Organization)
-
Alexander Gordon
(Builder)
Other Name(s):
-
The Fur Trade at Lachine
(Designation Name)
-
"XY", North West Trading Company Warehouse
(Other Name)
-
The Lachine Stone Warehouse / Le Hangar de pierre de Lachine
(Plaque name)
Research Report Number:
1968-029, 1998-035; 70-006; 1966-008; 1968-041; 1967-012; 1960-040; 1960-002
DFRP Number:
56457 00
Plaque(s)
Plaque Removed: Commerce-de-la-Fourrure-à-Lachine, père Marquette Drive 1255 Saint-Joseph Boulevard, Lachine, Quebec
In 1803 Alexander Gordon, a former North West Company clerk had this stone warehouse built for the storage and transshipment of furs and trade goods. Taken over in 1833 by the Hudson's Bay Company, it continued as a fur trade depot until 1859. The Sisters of Sainte Anne then transformed it into a residence for their employees. Parks Canada acquired the building in 1977 to commemorate the history of the fur trade at Montreal and Lachine in the 19th century.
Description of Historic Place
Fur Trade at Lachine National Historic Site of Canada is a rectangular single-storey, stone warehouse located in an attractive park-like setting on the banks of the Lachine Canal on St. Joseph Boulevard opposite the Convent of the Sisters of Sainte-Anne in Lachine on the west end of Montréal Island. The designation refers to the warehouse on its lot.
Heritage Value
The Fur Trade at Lachine was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1984 to commemorate: the fur trade in the Montréal area.
The heritage value of Fur Trade at Lachine National Historic Site of Canada resides in the surviving 18th-century form, and fabric of the warehouse building as they illustrate the history of the fur trade in Montréal.
Built in 1803 by Alexander Gordon of the Northwest Company, this warehouse was acquired by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1833, then by the Sisters of Sainte-Anne, who owned it from 1861-1977. When the building was modernized early in the 20th century, most of its original openings and surfaces disappeared. They were restored by Parks Canada (1978-1984) after a fire demolished all but the stone walls and half of the roof structure.
Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, 1984; Commemorative Integrity Statement, 2000.
Character-Defining Elements
Key elements that contribute to the heritage character of the site include: its park-like siting with the south face adjacent to a second enlarged canal; its rectangular single storey massing under a hipped roof; the irregular disposition of its gables and apertures; its surviving original fieldstone walls and the early craftsmanship; the found form, materials, and craftsmanship of its pre-1860s dormers, windows and doors; the location on the St. Lawrence River beside the historic channel for western travel; its siting with the long north wall of the building on a former wharf off Lachine’s first canal now known as ‘la promenade Père Marquette’; viewplanes from the south-west side to Lake Saint-Louis, the St. Lawrence River.