Pointe-Saint-Charles

Pointe-Saint-Charles

Located southwest of Downtown Montreal, Pointe Saint-Charles is bounded on the north by the Bonaventure Expressway, the east and southeast by the Saint Lawrence River, the southwest by the Decarie Expressway and Bonaventure Expressways, as well as Quebec Route 112 (Rue Bridge) leading to the Victoria Bridge. and Atwater Avenue, and the west by the Lachine Canal. Point-Saint-Charles is also the Montreal end of the Champlain Bridge complex leading to Nuns’ Island and Clement bridges and the South Shore at Brossard. Major thoroughfares include Rue Saint-Patrick, Rue du Centre, Rue Wellington, and Rue Charlevoix.

In 1662, Paul Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve , founder of Montreal and its first governor, granted an area on the pointe Saint-Charles, to. Marguerite Bourgeoys for agricultural use by the nuns of the Notre-Dame Congregation. The sisters operated a sharecropping farm on the land. They built the Maison Saint-Gabriel, the only remaining trace of their farm and one of the oldest buildings in Montreal, in 1698. Their farming activity only ceased altogether in the 1950s.

Until the mid-19th century, the whole area is chiefly agricultural, and urbanization begins with the enlargement of the Lachine Canal, completed in 1848, as the transportation access, water power, installation of railways and the construction of Victoria Bridge in 1860 attract industry to the what is now the Sud-Ouest borough of Montreal.

Numerous workers moved in, including Irish immigrants, French-Canadians, English, Scots and, later, Poles, Ukrainians and Lithuanians.

By the 1860s the area thus is a busy industrial neighbourhood, one of Canada's first industrial slums. Notably, the development on Grand Trunk Row (today Rue Sébastopol) introduced the stacked "duplex," based on British working-class housing, that would come to be so typical of neighbourhoods throughout Montreal. Building continued in the central Rushbrooke/Hibernia area until 1910.

Like the rest of the area around the Lachine Canal, the neighbourhood went into a long decline in the 1960s, caused by the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and sealed by the closure of the Lachine Canal. The destruction of Goose Village and the construction of the Bonaventure Autoroute further impacted the area.

Several social housing developments were built in the 1970s; today, some 40% of the housing stock in Pointe-Saint-Charles is social housing. The Montreal Metro reached Pointe-Saint-Charles in 1978 with the construction of Charlevoix Metro (subway) Station.

In recent years, the neighbourhood has undergone gentrification. The Montreal Technoparc industrial park opened in 1988. The rehabilitation of the Lachine Canal for recreational use inn 2002 spurred the reclamation of factories along the canal for lofts and condominiums. However, this increased rents and cost of living.

Pointe-Saint-Charles straddled the Montreal city limit, and the part outside was set up as the village of Saint-Gabriel in 1874 and annexed to Montreal in 1887, becoming a city ward. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Atwater-Saint-Charles Park. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Beginning of Du Centre Street at D'Argunson Park. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Ropery and du Centre intersection. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Augustin-Cantin Street, a typical local street. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

The Ukrainian Community still returns to the Point to worship at Holy Ghost Parish on the corner of Grand Trunk and Shearer Streets. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Thomas Keefer Street. Today, Pointe-Saint-Charles is considered the heart of Irish Montreal, with street names like Rue Saint-Patrick, Rue d'Hibernia, Place Dublin, and Rue des Irlandais testifying to its heritage. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Condos near the St. Patrick Street. The neighbourhood is served by the Charlevoix metro station, with LaSalle station near the southwestern part of the neighbourhood in Verdun. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

The same condos by the Atwater-St-Charles Park. Adjacent neighbourhoods are Little Burgundy (across the canal to the north Montreal directions), Griffintown to the northeast, the wharves of the Old Port to the east, and the borough of Verdun to the west. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

St-Charles Street. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

Du Grand Trunk Street. The Grand Trunk Yards operated here for a long time, performing switching operations and storing trains in the area. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

In the early 20th century, the sector was made up of two city wards: St. Gabriel, to the west, and St. Ann, to the east, which also included Griffintown and extended as far as McGill Street in what is now Old Montreal. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

The residential part of the neighbourhood is bisected by the CN Rail line running through its centre on an elevated structure. A large industrial area, including the former CN rail yards, lies on landfill to the east; on the riverside, the Montreal Technoparc is home to film studios. The CN Rail, VIA, and Amtrak lines to Montreal's Central Station run through Pointe-Saint-Charles. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com

The two were divided by the former city limit line, passing from the basin on the Lachine Canal just west of the St. Gabriel Locks to the riverbank just south of what is now the end of Ash Avenue. Photo by © ProvinceQuebec.com