Ritz-Carlton

Known as the grand dame of Sherbrooke Street, the Ritz-Carlton was financed by a syndicate headed by Square Mile millionaire Charles R. Hosmer and officially opened on New Year's Eve in 1912 with an inaugural ball. The elegant ten-storey, 230-room hotel, then one of Montreal's tallest buildings, was designed by New York architects Warren and Wetmore to equal in status its namesakes in Paris, London, and New York. Its Indiana limestone facade with matching terracotta trim recalls the palace facades of northern Italy and includes a wide frieze of acanthus leaves above the ground floor, a frieze of fleurs-de-lis linking the arcaded windows of the top storey, and a cast iron entrance marquee. A western extension completed in 1956 was successfully integrated with the original building through the reuse of the original terra-cotta moulds for its cladding. Throughout its history, the hotel has been known for its club-like atmosphere and, although modernized, retains most of the exterior and interior architectural details and furnishings that made it famous. After Sherbrooke Street was extended west from Aylmer Street to Cote-des-Neiges in the 1840s, it became an elegant tree-lined avenue of public buildings and private residences built by many central figures in Canada's industrial and financial development, bisecting the area between the escarpment above Saint Antoine Street and the slopes of Mount Royal known as the Square Mile. Though time, demolition, and new construction changed Sherbrooke Street considerably, the surviving buildings still testify to its glorious past.

Quebec · Canada