Forty history buffs braved the windy cold on Feb. 15 to settle into the comfort of the Westmount Room of the Westmount Public Library to indulge on coffee and cookies before listening to Caroline Breslaw and Ruth Allan-Rigby, researchers with the Westmount Historical Association, talk about the three houses designed by Westmount architect Robert Findlay for Robertson Macaulay and his son Thomas Bassett, both presidents of the Sun Life Assurance Company. The three homes, built in 1891 and 1911, still exist today.

In her well-researched introduction to Dorchester Boulevard, where the earliest house was built, Breslaw showed maps and photographs while explaining the development of this southeast corner of present day Westmount. She pointed out that the land west of Atwater Avenue and extending to Hallowell Street had originally been ceded to Jeanne Mance and the Hotel Dieu by de Maisonneuve.

Breslaw then traced the ownership of the land from William Hallowell who was a shareholder of the North West Company, and the first person to build a country house (in 1805) on the top of the escarpment to Dr. Selby, who occupied the house from 1824 until 1845. The house was then purchased by Postmaster-General Thomas Stayner, who lived in it from 1845 to 1872.

In 1887 the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association bought 10 acres of the Hallowell estate to be used as athletic fields. The Methodist Church of Canada bought some of the land and in 1936 Westmount acquired this to establish Stayner Park. Then, in 1967, the Hallowell house and other homes on Selby Street were demolished to make way for the Ville Marie Expressway.

The audience learned that both Robertson, the father, and Thomas, the son, Macaulay were living in two adjacent row houses they had had built around 1890 at 1277 and 1279 on the north side of Dorchester when Thomas Bassett Macaulay commissioned Robert Findlay, the young Scottish architect, who had won the design competition in 1887, to build the new headquarters of the Sun Life building on Notre Dame Street, to design a home for him on the southwest corner of Dorchester and Clandeboye. He never lived in the elegant red sandstone Queen Anne style house, but rented it out. This house which shares many of the same architectural features as the Westmount Public Library designed by Findlay in 1898, still stands today at 4100 Dorchester Boulevard.

Ruth Allan–Rigby continued the evening by explaining the background of the Macaulay family and showing slides depicting many of the architectural features of the two homes that Findlay built for the Macaulays higher up the slope of the mountain, with a view of the river.

In 1911 Robertson Macaulay, then 80 years old, commissioned Findlay to design a house on Cedar Avenue, where he lived until his death in 1918. This house has been Miss Edgars’ and Miss Cramps’ School for girls since 1963. In the same year, Findlay was asked to design the Calvary Congregational Church at the corner of Dorchester and Greene Avenue, since demolished. Both father and son were members and Thomas Bassett laid the cornerstone on June 8, 1912.

The third home designed by the Findlay firm for the Macaulay family was for the son Thomas Bassett at 1 Braeside Avenue on the Boulevard. It was also designed in 1911 but only completed in 1914.

Since 1960, it has housed The Study. A drawing of the original building showed a large Porte-cochere on the west side providing a covered main entrance to the house for people to enter from a horse and carriage or motor vehicle. The Porte-cochere has been demolished but the low-pitched roof covered with red ceramic tiles and the decorative brackets underneath the wide overhanging eaves of this Italianate Revival home can still be seen today.



• Doreen Lindsay is president of the Westmount Historical Association.