Château Ramezay

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Château Ramezay

The Château Ramezay is a historic building in Montreal . It is located in the old town ( Vieux-Montréal ) on Rue Notre-Dame . The building was built in 1705 as the governor's residence and is one of the oldest preserved in the city. Today it serves as an ethnological museum and portrait gallery. The Château Ramezay is a listed building and has been a National Historic Site since 1949 .

history

The building on a painting from 1886

In 1705, Claude de Ramezay , then Governor of Montreal , had the building built as a personal residence. His descendants sold it to the French West India Company in 1745 . A fire in 1754 caused great damage, after which the building was rebuilt and expanded from 1755 to 1757 using the original foundations. After the British conquered Montreal, the West India Company was forced to sell the building in 1764. The new owner of Château Ramezay was the merchant William Grant, who rented it to the government from 1773. From then on, the governor general lived there during stays in the city, with the exception of the invasion of Canada by the Continental Army in 1775/76 , when the American commanders stayed here.

The last governor moved out in 1844 and from 1849 the Château Ramezay initially served as a courthouse and from 1856 to 1879 as a primary school. For a time, the offices of the Ministry of Education were also housed here. The Université Laval opened a branch in Montreal and used the building for its medical faculty from 1880 and for the law school from 1883. The university moved out again in 1889 and a court was again housed here for the next four years. In 1895 the building became the property of the City of Montreal. Since then it has been used by the Société d'archéologie et de numismatique de Montréal (Numismatic and Archaeological Society), which operates a museum there.

Building

View of the garden

The Château Ramezay, located opposite the Hôtel de Ville (town hall), is a typical town house from the era of the colony of New France . The light gray limestone walls consist partly of reused field stones from the original building, but mainly of rubble stones from nearby quarries. The building comprises a fully vaulted basement , a ground floor and an attic floor. A gable roof framed by gable fields spans over it . The left side of the facade is provided with a turret.

At the rear of the Château de Ramezay there is a French-style garden .

museum

The museum's collection consists mainly of donations from Montreal residents and includes around 30,000 objects. These include:

  • Drawings, prints, paintings and etchings of historical significance as well as portraits of influential personalities
  • ethnological collection with everyday objects and works of art of the indigenous people
  • Collection of everyday objects of the French-Canadian population of the 18th and 19th centuries
  • Coin collections
  • Collections of photographs
  • Library with 13,000 titles

Web links

Commons : Château Ramezay  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lieu historique du Canada du Château-De-Ramezay / Maison-des-Indes. Lieux patrimoniaux du Canada, accessed September 22, 2011 (French).
  2. ↑ a b c Château Ramezay - Musée et site historique de Montréal. In: Vieux-Montréal. City of Montreal and Province of Quebec, accessed September 22, 2011 (French).

Coordinates: 45 ° 30 ′ 31.5 "  N , 73 ° 33 ′ 11.3"  W.