Square Dorchester

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Square Dorchester

The Dorchester Square is a 11,000 square meter space in Montreal . It is located in the central Ville-Marie district between Boulevard René-Lévesque , Rue Metcalfe and Rue Peel . The square, opened in 1872, is designed as an urban park and is the location of several monuments. It is particularly important for pedestrian traffic in the city center. Place du Canada is located southeast of the boulevard ; both places had the same name until 1967, Square Dominion .

Buildings

Several high-rise office buildings line Dorchester Square. The 122-meter-high Édifice Sun Life on Metcalfe Street and the 187-meter-high Tour CIBC on Rue Peel are particularly outstanding . The former Hotel Windsor on Rue Peel, formerly one of the most luxurious hotels in the city, is now also used as an office building. The Marie-Reine-du-Monde de Montréal Cathedral is across the street from Boulevard René-Lévesque .

Four monuments have been erected in Dorchester Square. George William Hill created the Lion of Belfort in 1897 , taking inspiration from the monument of the same name by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi in the French city of Belfort . It was a commissioned work for the insurance company Sun Life . Ten years later, Hill created a memorial to commemorate the Second Boer War . The city's only equestrian statue faces north towards the Mont Royal Cross , which was visible from here until 1929. Since 1930, a statue by the sculptor GA Lawson commemorates the Scottish poet Robert Burns . The last to be added in 1953 was a monument to the Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier , created by Joseph-Émile Brunet .

  • Lion of Belfort

  • Boer War memorial

  • Robert Burns Memorial

  • Wilfrid Laurier memorial

history

Photo and plan of the Square Dominion (1907 and 1927 respectively)

Until the middle of the 19th century the area was an ordinary green space. From 1851, most of it was temporarily used as a cemetery in order to be able to quickly bury the victims of a cholera epidemic. It was an extension of the Catholic cemetery Saint-Antoine on the other side of the Boulevard Dorchester (today Boulevard René-Lévesque). In 1854 the city had the dead exhumed and transferred to the new Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery. In 1870 she acquired the site, and the Square Dominion was officially opened two years later . As a result, numerous representative buildings were built around the square. In 1967 the southeastern part of Square Dominion was named Place du Canada on the occasion of the centenary of the Canadian Confederation . In 1987, the north-western section was renamed Square Dorchester, at the same time as the renaming of Boulevard Dorchester in Boulevard René-Lévesque. The name is reminiscent of Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester , one of the first British governors of Québec . From 2009 to 2012 extensive renovation work was carried out on both sites.

Web links

Commons : Square Dorchester  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le Lion de Belfort. In: L'art public à Montréal. City of Montreal, accessed November 1, 2011 (French).
  2. ↑ Monument aux heros de la guerre des Boers. In: L'art public à Montréal. City of Montreal, accessed November 1, 2011 (French).
  3. ^ Monument à Robert Burns. In: L'art public à Montréal. City of Montreal, accessed November 1, 2011 (French).
  4. ^ Monument à sir Wilfrid Laurier. In: L'art public à Montréal. City of Montreal, accessed November 1, 2011 (French).

Coordinates: 45 ° 29 '58.2 "  N , 73 ° 34' 14.9"  W.