The Death and Life of Charlotte Street
Regular readers will know that Guillaume St-Jean is an exceptionally dedicated enthusiast of Montreal history. His growing collection of then-and-now photos is fascinating and informative. Often, the best ones look back not to the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries but to recent decades—the 1970s, 80s and 90s—which offer clues as to what we’ve done wrong and what we’ve done right in recent urban history.
A case in point is the above photo of an early nineteenth century cottage on Charlotte Street, an easily-overlooked downtown sidestreet near the corner of Ste. Catherine and St. Laurent. Sometime after 1985, when the top photo was taken, the house burned down and was never replaced.
Charlotte Street is in the midst of a neighbourhood that has been neglected for decades. It first developed in the eighteenth century as a faubourg strung along the old chemin Saint-Laurent. In the early twentieth century it became an important commercial district, but by the 1930s, it was better-known as Montreal’s red light district, a seedy, seething conglomeration of bars and brothels. Much of the neighbourhood was razed in the 1960s to build the Habitations Jeanne-Mance, a large public housing project in the typical Modernist mould.
Nevertheless, the area thrived well into the 1970s. A Time magazine article from 1971, unearthed by Kristian Gravenor at Coolopolis, describes the Lower Main’s diverse inhabitants: “An among this polyglot crowd, they manage to give the cold, gray, decaying street all the allure of an oriental bazaar. Beaded Sikhs, kohl-eyed Indian ladies and irrepressible Africans jostle with West Indians, Greeks, Arabs, Italians, Chinese, Portuguese, Spaniards and Filipinos.” Greengrocers peppered the street in between nightclubs and topless bars; one carried “509 kinds of chili peppers, 150 spices and 300 different Indian specialties.”
Only one of those famous groceries remains. Hard times in 80s and 90s left the vicinity of the lower Main in a rather distressed state. A bad economy, drugs and street prostitution led to disinvestment. Businesses closed, leaving only peep shows, fast food joints and the kind of bars that cater mostly to alcoholics. Streets like Charlotte took on a ragged appearance as buildings burned down and were never replaced.
Things have gotten better since then. The reconceptualization of the area around Ste. Catherine and the Main as the “Quartier des spectacles” has served as a catalyst for new investment. A student residence was built at the corner of St. Laurent and René Lévesque in 2003. Nearby, on Charlotte Street, a long string of parking lots has been replaced with a huge apartment complex containing hundreds of new residential units. A mosque near St. Dominique and Charlotte has gradually expanded the commercial building that was its home: first came the addition of a second story, then the construction of a tiny minaret and a graffiti-inspired mural with Arabic script. It seems to be a perpetual work in progress.
The Quartier des spectacles redevelopment plan is just getting started. Although I am naturally sceptical of such a blatant attempt to rebrand a neighbourhood, it actually seems to have some merit. The emphasis, so far, has been on fleshing out the area’s history of nocturnal deviance rather than imposing some contrived, family-friendly “entertainment zone” atmosphere. We’ll see if this translates into a genuine rebirth of a still-marginal neighbourhood.
Left, 1985: Haitian grocery store at St. Dominique and Charlotte.
Right, 2007: Vacant lot. Photos compiled by Guillaume St-Jean
New condo development on Charlotte Street
Tags: Montreal, Quartier des spectacles, Redevelopment, Then and Now
