Piedmont

Entrance off Pine Avenue, near Durocher, Montreal, Quebec

Built circa 1819, for The Hon. Louis-Charles Foucher (1760-1829) and his wife Marie-Elizabeth Foretier. Foucher was Judge of the Court of King’s Bench at Montreal. He built his new mansion on a country estate on the lower slopes of Mount Royal, naming it Piedmont – ‘foot of the mountain’. However, from the 1830s, Piedmont was best associated with the Frothingham family and for a period it was the residence Governors-General. Ten acres of the original estate was gifted to the city in 1890 by Lords Strathcona and Mount Stephen on which they built the Royal Victoria Hospital. The mansion house itself eventually fell prey to urban development in 1936....

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This house is best associated with...

John Frothingham

John Frothingham of Piedmont, Montreal

1788-1870

Louisa (Archibald) Frothingham

Mrs Louisa Goddard (Archibald) Frothingham

1794-1843

Louisa (Frothingham) Molson

Mrs Louisa Goddard (Frothingham) Molson, of Piedmont

1827-1910

John Henry Robinson Molson

John H.R. Molson, of "Rosebank" & "Piedmont"; President of the Molson Bank etc.

1826-1897

Louis-Charles Foucher's grandfather came to Quebec from Bourges, France, and his father is remembered for staging the first production of Molière with various English officers at his home in Montreal in 1774. His own career saw him become Solicitor-General for Lower Canada and Judge of the Court's of King's Bench at Montreal. Unusually for a Francophone, he was a Tory which put him at odds with his wife's brother-in-law, Denis-Benjamin Viger, who was imprisoned as a leader of the Patriote movement before being appointed joint Prime Minister of the Canadas in 1843.

Foucher's Flamboyance

The gates to the long carriage drive by which the house was approached stood on Pine Avenue at the head of Durocher Street with a smaller gate to the side for visitors on foot. The tree-lined drive led up first through meadows and then orchards before reaching the mansion that was set amidst formal gardens. Foucher lived at Piedmont with his family which included his son-in-law (and first cousin), The Hon. Hugues Heney (1789-1844). During his time here, the flamboyant judge entertained lavishly and gained a reputation for the after-dinner firework displays he held for his guests in the formal gardens.

Frothingham's Floriculture & The Governor's Residence

Soon after the death of Foucher in 1829 the house was purchased by John Frothingham (1788-1870) in the hope that the country air would cure his ailing wife, Louisa Goddard Archibald (1794-1843). John Frothingham himself had no particular love of country life, admitting that he never had, “a taste or turn for gardening, but my beloved wife had a great taste for flowers, and was very fond of rural occupations.” Under Mrs Frothingham’s careful superintendence, the estate was gradually altered and improved until her ailments finally caught up with her and she died in 1843.

From 1844 until 1849, the distraught Frothingham only used the house during the summers. When Parliament convened at Montreal during the winters of those years he leased it out and it was adopted as the official residence of the Governors-General of Canada, namely Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Earl of Cathcart, and the Earl of Elgin.

The Long Wait for Love

From 1849, Frothingham returned to living year-round at Piedmont with his youngest daughter, Louisa, who had vowed to stay here with her father as his companion and housekeeper for as long as he should live. Her eventual husband, John Henry Robinson Molson (1826-1897), had to wait thirty years before he could marry her after her father’s death in 1870, by which time she was too old to have children. After their marriage, Molson vacated his home, Rosebank, and moved in with his new wife at Piedmont.

In 1890, the Molsons sold off 10-acres of the Piedmont estate for $86,000 to Lord Strathcona and Lord Mount Stephen. In 1887, these two public-spirited cousins had given $1 million between them to establish what would become the Royal Victoria Hospital, and the ten acres purchased from the Molsons was used as the site for the new hospital.

Mrs Molson at Piedmont before McGill

Despite the sale, the Molsons still retained the greater part of the estate and continued to live in their home. The mother of Lois Sybil (Harrington) Winslow-Spragge (1889-1978) was Molson's niece and she gave a description of life at Piedmont around the early 1900s:

Every Sunday afternoon, the widowed Mrs Molson was ‘at home’. Mrs Winslow-Spragge remembered being taken to Piedmont by her father, Professor Bernard James Harrington (1848-1907) of McGill. They would enter the pedestrians gate and walk up the long boardwalk. Piedmont was near the summit of the mountain property, far from the gate on Pine Avenue. As they approached the house, they passed by a little brown building where the apples were stored; she could recall the delicious smell. Next they came to fields of Lilies of the Valley; sometimes she was permitted to pick them.

Back of the house was a courtyard. Here were formal gardens with beds of heliotropes, geraniums, petunias, and a sea of thousands of pansies of every imaginable colour. Here too, was a large pond, stocked with goldfish.

In the huge dining room was a tall mirror with a standing frame, where it could be swung up or down. Mrs Molson would take the children to it, where they could see themselves reflected at full length. Then she would tip the mirror to distort the image. Suddenly they became grotesquely fat, or grotesquely thin. It was great fun. Then she would dance for them in front of the mirror while they laughed and giggled. Or she would take them into the room that her husband had used as his library. All sorts of things were there to amuse them: A small round glass globe, when turned upside down, made a shower like snowflakes.

In summertime, Mrs Molson would visit the Harringtons at their cottage in Little Metis. She would arrive with her nurse (and) it was always a pleasure to have her, as she enlivened every day even though the cottage became crowded. During her visits, baskets of big Montreal melons would arrive from the farm at Piedmont.

Mrs Molson died at Piedmont in 1910, leaving over $460,000 in her will to benefit charities in Montreal. The following year the estate was purchased for $1 million by another of the city’s greatest philanthropists, Sir William Christopher Macdonald (1831-1917). Piedmont was kept, but he donated almost all of it remaining land to McGill University. The old mansion finally succumbed to urban development in 1936 when it was demolished to make way for McGill’s Douglas Hall of Residence.