Long-gone Durnford house revealed through WHA lecture

Immediately, I decided that I had to invite him to a Westmount Historical Association meeting to tell us all he knew about this house that had been built even before Westmount was called Westmount. We were still the Town of Côte-Saint-Antoine.

As it turned out, Elwood not only came to tell his story about the Durnford family house on May 17, but he donated the Durnford family album to us, for which we will be forever grateful.

Historical Association members were shown an early map with the name Philip Durnford clearly printed on the rectangle of land along the north side of Dorchester from Atwater to present-day Gladstone Avenue and north to present-day Tupper Street. The same map showed Dorchester Avenue extending north along what is now Greene Avenue, with a toll gate on the corner of Sherbrooke Street. Durnford built Greenhythe as his family home on this land, but it is not known exactly where it was located.

The Durnfords were a proud military family who traced their involvement in the Royal Engineers as far back as 1759, when Elias Durnford rose to the rank of colonel and served in the West Indies. Each generation also showed talent in drawing. The audience was shown some detailed watercolours done by Elias Durnford.

Elwood had begun his talk to the 50 members of the Westmount Historical Association by showing photographs of some of the great mansions that once lined Dorchester Street, back when it was one of Montreal’s most fashionable streets, in the late 1800’s. Homes were built for Henry Joseph, the Franklin and Shaughnessy families, and others. Other buildings along Dorchester included the St. James Club, the Grey Nunnery, St. Patrick’s Presbytery and Church, the Franciscan Church. All photographs were from the famous William Notman Studios of Montreal.

Elwood continued to explain how homes on the north side of Dorchester were demolished in the 1960s by showing newspaper articles extolling the new Dorchester Boulevard project, which sought to widen it to create a “four-lane tree-centered expressway linking Atwater Avenue and the Clarke Avenue-Hallowell Street area by 1965.”

“Today,” Elwood pointed out through his own photographs, “we see parking lots where the Durnford family house used to stand.”

Ellwood obtained his Bachelor of Architecture degree from McGill in 1950, then joined the Province of Quebec Architect’s Association and the firm of Featherstonehaugh, Durnford, Bolton and Chadwick. In Westmount, he has worked on the renovation of Westmount City Hall and on the RCMP divisional headquarters, as well as the Westmount Premier building on St. Catherine Street.

• Doreen Lindsay is president of the Westmount historical Association.