herr2ck: Le Marché

August 2025.

The large, Neoclassical Bonsecours Market was Montreal’s public market for more than a century. Narrowly escaping demolition in the 1960s, it still houses retail functions today, but it is no longer the multicultural public market that it was in the past.

Bonsecours Market is located at 350 Rue Saint-Paul East in Old Montreal, occupying an entire city block. It is bordered by Rue Bonsecours and Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours to the north, Rue de Marche Bonsecours to the south, Rue Commune and the old Port of Montreal to the east, and Rue Saint-Paul East to the west.

History

1859 photo of the market. (McCord Stewart Museum)

Bonsecours Market was the first large building constructed by Montreal’s city government. Montreal was named the capital of United Canada in 1843, and at that time, the Canadian parliament was housed in a much smaller marketplace. An architectural competition was held, won by British architect William Footner, and the site’s excavation began in September 1844. The market itself opened in January 1847, but the building was incomplete. By May of that year, the budget had almost tripled, and Montreal architect George Browne replaced Footner as the market’s architect. Browne completed the dome and the end wings, which were different from the original design. Bonsecours Market was completed in 1848, influenced by Dublin’s Customs House.

The large second-floor rooms are believed to have originally been intended to house the Canadian parliament. Due to Bonsecours Market’s massive scale for a then-small city, the prominent dome, and the fact that these rooms were not completed until 1851, the architecture supports this theory, though there is no written evidence. However, Montreal lost its status as capital of United Canada in 1849, and the parliament only held a few sessions in the unfinished rooms due to a fire in Saint-Anne Market, its former home.

c. 1890 view of Bonsecours Market. (Vieux-Montreal)

With the loss of Bonsecours Market’s possible original tenant, it was redesigned to house various municipal functions in addition to the marketplace. George Browne converted the southwestern portion into a town hall in 1851, and at that time other uses included a concert hall, police station, and a space for banquets/exhibitions. The Rue Saint-Paul portico dates to 1860, as its cast-iron columns were only then completed. The east side facing the port was intended to have an identical portico, however, it has never been built.

Montreal’s city hall and police station left in 1878 (the former to its current building), and the upper floors of Bonsecours Market were then used by various military organizations. They were succeeded by market stalls in the 1890s, however. The market soon came to dominate the entire building, which led to its gradual deterioration. Three fires--1891, 1948, and 1954--all damaged Bonsecours Market, the second of which completely destroyed its dome. In 1963, the market was closed, and a new building that replaced it was built north of Montreal.

1937 view of Bonsecours Market. (Wikimedia)

Naturally, given the zeitgeist of the 1960s, demolition of Bonsecours Market was being discussed. However, after public backlash and the creation of the Old Montreal historic district in 1964, the city decided to keep the building. Its exterior was restored, the dome was redesigned in metal, and the interior was renovated. The dome was destroyed again in 1976, however, though it was replaced once more in 1978. In 1990, the city government left Bonsecours Market, and it was renovated during the following two decades into a public building. Today, it houses both retail and rentable banquet space.

Photos

This is a wideeee building.

It basically consists of several independent Neoclassical modules linked by highly regular, undecorated connectors. At this point in time on my trip I was running very low on camera battery, and I mainly focused on the more architecturally decorated portions. Here is the north end’s portico, facing Rue Bonsecours:

Very sober Neoclassical architecture. It uses a simple, almost archaic Greek Doric order with stocky columns and pilasters. The entablature above is barely even hinted at, only through the vertical division halfway up and the shape of the pediment that forms the roof.

The south end’s module immediately adjacent to the south end portico:

I know I basically jumped across the entire building from north to south, but it’s perfectly symmetrical across the middle, another common Neoclassical feature. I’m seeing a few features here that are unusual on Neoclassical architecture, though, such as the doubled pilasters and the “stacking” of two modules (note the duality established by the taller pilasters and entablature of the first two floors versus the shorter third floor above).

Entrance immediately south of the central portico:

This one is almost Palladian in comparison and has a more established unity. It lacks columns entirely and has a large, rather clumsily scaled portal in the middle. Above the cornice is a decorative parapet, which is only seen on this portion of the building and breaks the previously established roofline.

The best part…the massive Doric portico that anchors the middle of the building and its main entrance:

This is a hexastyle portico, meaning it has six columns. Again, matching the rather archaic Greek Doric order used here, hexastyle was the standard facade of early ancient Greek temples. It also features triglyphs, which only exist on this portion of the building. The widened bay in the middle to accommodate the large metal doors is also a classical feature, part of the eustyle method of intercolumniation (space between columns).

Detail of one of the columns:

Their stockiness, steep taper, and lack of a base are pretty defining features of Greek Doric columns. Note that they actually bulge outward a bit--this is called entasis, and is meant to visually correct an optical illusion that columns would appear to curve inward.

Pediment detail:

Aside from the wooden sign of the building’s name, the seal above is Montreal's first coat of arms. The triglyphs, which are skeuomorphs of beams from early wooden Greek temples, are centered over each column below.

Looking upwards at the dome:

It uses Ionic pilasters and rather fancy arched windows with prominent keystones, but this is still very bare-bones compared to the later Second Empire architecture that would come to dominate Old Montreal in the decades following. I’m unsure if the drum itself is original or not, but the dome itself is a replacement dating to the 1970s.

Another look from further away: