Thursday Doors – January 25, 2018

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing it, between Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time), by using the blue link-up button below. 

Special Note: Before I get to this week’s doors, I just wanted to let you know that the WordPress spam goblins are feasting on my comments again. If I follow you regularly or if you post for Thursday Doors and you have not seen a comment from me in a while it may be because my comments are stuck in spam limbo. I don’t know why this keeps happening to me but it is VERY annoying 😦

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Marché Bonsecours – Vieux Montréal / Bonsecours Market – Old Montreal

This street is a lot less busy in mid-January than it is in mid-June

Named for its next-door neighbor the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel

the Marché Bonsecours is an old historic market building facing the city’s old port that has served many functions over the years.

Built from locally quarried grey-stone, construction on the market began in 1844 and was completed in 1849. Despite the fact that completion was several years late, the building was far enough along to allow the public market to operate starting in 1847.

The two-story structure served this main vocation for over a hundred years allowing merchants and local area farmers a central place to display and sell their wares.

Among its other vocations, the building also briefly housed the Parliament of the United Provinces of Canada back in the spring of 1849, after protesters burned the original Parliament to the ground over an unpopular bill that was passed to compensate those who had suffered damages during the Patriot Rebellions a decade earlier.

After this Montréal was considered too socially unstable and Parliament was moved alternately between Toronto and Québec City until 1857 when Queen Victoria finally decided on Ottawa as Canada’s permanent capital.

The Marché also housed Montreal’s city hall from 1852 until 1878 when the current city hall was completed.

Over the years it has also served as a police headquarters, exhibit hall, concert hall and public meeting place.

It terms of size and function it reminds me a lot of Faneuil Hall in Boston, except with fewer food stands and more fancy shops.

Like many of our old historic buildings the Marché came close to going under the wrecking ball.

In 1963 after years of neglect, various levels of government contributed the needed funds to restore and renovate the property. Subsequent renovations included a rebuild of the structure’s signature dome, and also gave the building a new life as an upscale market housing fancy shops for tourists on the main floor and meeting halls on the second level.

If you ever visit the Old Port area of our city, you can’t miss a visit to the Marché Bonsecours.

Again this week I have a few bonus doors to throw in from elsewhere on my walk in Old Montréal:

As always, thanks so much for visiting 🙂

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