Among the possible ways of analyzing city fabric, the focus on a single material of construction provides insight into a wide range of topics. Originally functional, Montreal grey limestone buildings, distinct from those built with other materials, came to hold special symbolic value. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thick stone walls provided protection against attack, fire, and the cold. During the 19th century, Greystone buildings developed from a pragmatic to a symbolic role through successive, layered material transformations, reflecting the changes in politics, trade, cultural identity, society, and human ambition.
“This approach would be less productive in cities like Paris or Jerusalem, for example, where all buildings are faced with local stone. However, in Montreal, the North American city with the greatest amount and concentration of stone construction, such focus is revelatory.” underlines Phyllis Lambert.
“Photographs are the protagonists of this exhibition”. Black and white, they are expanded on and complemented by maps that are key to understanding the city, its topography, building dates, architects, owners, and occupants at the time of construction. They explore Old Montreal and the three central neighbourhoods — the former faubourgs of Saint-Laurent, Saint-Louis and Saint-Jacques, which have been the heart of Francophone Montreal for two centuries. Among the sources of research underlying this study are primary documents that include insurance atlases, historical city maps, cadastral plans, municipal tax assessment rolls, city directories, notarial records and private papers.
The research undertaken and presented in this exhibition permitted constructing a social history of urban change.
Greystone: Tools for Understanding the City is among numerous projects Phyllis Lambert has devoted to heritage in a context of research and museology. In the mid-seventies, the initial study of Greystone buildings was carried out by the Montreal Greystone Building Research Group formed and led by Lambert – before archival research programs on architecture of the city were implemented. Subsequently the Groupe de recherche sur Montréal established at the CCA. It was at the origin of an important data bank on property and buildings in Montreal at the beginning of the colony, a work in collaboration with Alan Stewart that led to the CCA exhibition and publication entitled Opening the Gates of Eighteenth Century Montreal (1992-1993) which Lambert curated. The exhibition and publication Montreal Metropolis, 1880-1930 (1998), concerning the period during which Montréal was transformed from a 19th century merchant city to the metropolis of Canada.
GREYSTONE Exhibition
The greystone buildings standing in Montreal today are evidence of patterns of settlement from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. A deep study of their history demonstrates the influence of geology, topography, politics, culture, and ethnicity in shaping the city over time.
Among the possible ways of analyzing city fabric, the focus on a single material of construction provides insight into a wide range of topics. This approach would be less productive in cities like Paris or Jerusalem, for example, where all buildings are faced with local stone. However, in Montreal, the North American city with the greatest amount and concentration of stone construction, such focus is revelatory. At first the result of pragmatic concerns, Montreal grey limestone buildings, distinct from those built with other materials, came to hold special symbolic value. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thick stone walls provided protection against attack, against fire, against the cold. Eventually they became prestigious markers of status.
During the winters of 1973 and 1974, I undertook a photographic mission with Richard Pare, working with a view camera to study city growth. Greystone buildings form a unity across the island and this campaign would become a catalyst for increased concerns about the conservation of the city’s heritage. Early in the day we trudged through the snow, photographing the neighbourhoods presented in this exhibition: Old Montreal and the original faubourgs directly north of it, as well as other faubourgs and suburban towns on the island of Montreal, as mapped in 1890.
Photographs are the protagonists of this exhibition. They are expanded on and complemented by maps and interpretative texts, the results of extensive research into building dates, proprietors, owners, and occupants at the time of construction. Insurance atlases, historical city maps, cadastral plans, municipal tax assessment rolls, city directories, notarial records, private papers, are the essential primary sources that help to construct a social history of urban change, confirming the patterns and hypotheses that emerge from a close study of visual documentation.
