About Beaver Hall Hill

Beaver Hall Hill

Beaver Hall Hill, now a busy downtown street in Montreal, was named after 'Beaver Hall', a mansion built in the vicinity in the 1790's by the fur dealer and local politician Joseph Frobisher (1740 - 1810).

Frobisher made a fortune by developing the fur trade in western Canada, in competition with the Hudson's Bay Company.

Portrait of Joseph Frobisher
© McCord Museum

By the beginning of the 20th century, the area around Beaver Hall Hill, including Beaver Hall Square, had become popular with artists.

The artists Maurice Cullen, the Des Clayes sisters, Laura Muntz and G. Horne Russell had their studios there. It had an 'old-world' charm that was, perhaps, reminiscent of the European cities that many of the artists had recently visited.

305 Beaver Hall Hill was just a few houses down from the Square. Its back overlooked a garden belonging to St Patrick's church.

Snow in Beaver Hall Hill Square
© McCord Museum

But by the late 1920's the area had changed radically as the old buildings (including 305 Beaver Hall Hill) were torn down and skyscrapers such as the Bell Telephone Building were put in their place.

This photograph, showing the early stages of the construction of the Bell Telephone building, looks north-east towards the top of Beaver Hall Hill, where the Beaver Hall Group's studio stood.

When completed in 1929, the Bell Building towered over the old neighbourhood.

Today it looks small in comparision to its neighbours and there is little to remind one of the Beaver Hall Hill of the early 1920's - except the paintings produced by the Beaver Hall Group.