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Places
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Office/House of the French East India Company, the former 1705 house of Claude of Ramezay as remodeled in the mid-1750s
The following are some of the best examples of preserved French colonial and colonial style architecture in mainland North America. |
Elite French colonial interiors reflected metropolitan practice, including multipurpose salles for formal entertaining, bedchambers that doubled as public and private space, and more intimate cabinets that functioned as side rooms and offices. Some homes also contained retail space.
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The following are some of the best examples of preserved architecture. UrbanUrban residences such Guillaume Estèbe's in Québec bear witness to the commercial successes of bourgeois merchants in French colonial Canada. Born in southwestern France in 1701, Estèbe arrived in the colonial capital as a merchant in 1729 and secured both a post on the Sovereign Council of New France and a seigneurie by 1743. He bought a house in the rue Saint-Pierre in 1737, which he sold in 1750. His new stone home, also on the same street, was completed by 1752 and boasted twenty-one rooms, eight fireplaces, and a vaulted cellar. Estèbe lived in the house until 1757, and it is among the most significant examples of French colonial architecture in Québec City.
Château Ramezay, 1705 with later additions, Montréal, riverside
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Maison Estèbe, 1751-1752, Québec
Dubbed the "château" Ramezay in 1929, the stone residence in the rue Notre-Dame of Montréal was home to the Ramezay family from 1705 until the mid-1720s. It was built by Claude de Ramezay, the descendant of a Burgundian noble family with Scottish origins. He arrived in Canada as a lieutenant in 1685. By 1690 he was the local governor of Trois-Rivières, and the promotion to governor of Montréal prompted the construction of his large stone house. Upon Ramezay's death in 1724, the structure was used to lodge the intendant when the government decamped from Québec in the winter months. It was sold to the French East India Company, the Compagnie des Indes, and extensively remodeled in 1756. Rising above a host of largely wooden structures in the town, the house was among the finest residences in French colonial Montréal. The digital image below recreates its original appearance, whereas the image to the right shows its current state, including a medieval style tower added in the late nineteenth century. |
Château Ramezay, original appearance
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Château Ramezay
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Manoir Mauvide-Genest, 1734, enlarged 1742 and 1752, île d'Orléans
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Rural estates known as seigneuries in Canada and plantations in Louisiana and the Antilles were also home to colonial elites. Begun in 1734, the stone manor house of Jean Mauvide was subsequently enlarged to its present form- which recalls that of the original château de Ramezay- in 1752. In that year, the former navy surgeon Mauvide became seigneur of the western half of the île d'Orléans, an island in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River northeast of Québec. The Mauvide-Genest manor is an incredibly rare survivor, representing an elite rural dwelling from the period of New France and similar in appearance to the château Saint-Louis, the governor-general's residence in Québec, and the château Ramezay. Amazingly, it was inhabited until 1984 and has since been restored to its original appearance. A chapel was added to the northern end of the manor house in the early twentieth century. |
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Another example of manorial architecture that has survived to the present day is a colonial manor in the town of Trois-Rivières. Built in 1668 by Jacques Leneuf de La Poterie, the house was bought by François Chastelain, a bourgeois seigneur and army officer, in 1729. He enlarged it and covered the original half-timbered construction with stone masonry. Chastelain offered the house to his daughter Marie-Josephte upon her marriage to the noble seigneur Joseph-Claude Boucher de Niverville in 1761. Boucher de Niverville's legacy has since become affixed to the site, and the restored manor now bears his name. |
Manoir Boucher de Niverville, 1668, enlarged after 1729, Trois-Rivières
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Madame John's Legacy (Lanzos House), circa 1788, New Orleans
Raised above ground to protect against flooding and equipped with covered outdoor galleries for ventilation, Madame John's Legacy is is the earliest domestic site to survive in the legendary French Quarter. Devastating fires ravaged New Orleans in 1788 and 1794, and the only trace of French regime era architecture there is the 1752 Ursuline convent. However, French colonial style persisted in Louisiana well into the nineteenth century. Many structures, including Madame John's Legacy, were rebuilt in the earlier French colonial style. The privately-owned house below was relocated to its present location in Pointe Coupée Parish, Louisiana, in 1996 after an earlier move in the 1980s. It is possibly the oldest structure in the Lower Mississippi Valley outside of New Orleans and stood on land originally belonging to Nicolas La Cour, born in Normandy in 1699 and married in New Orleans in 1726. La Cour died in Louisiana in 1761. The house might have been part of the French military post of Pointe Coupée, founded in 1720, which could explain its large size. Like Madame John's Legacy, it is representative of the type of French colonial architecture common in Louisiana, the Illinois Country, and the West Indies.
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Popularly known as Madame John's Legacy, this New Orleans house was rebuilt in 1788 for the Spanish military captain Manuel de Lanzos; however, it incorporates the hardware if not the actual walls of an earlier home, possibly that erected circa 1730 and inhabited by Élisabeth Réal Pascal Marin. An illiterate but successful innkeeper, this businesswoman occupied the site from the 1730s until her death in 1777. An inventory for her son-in-law, the king's surgeon in New Orleans, exists that describes the original house's furnishings in 1759. 
Madame John's Legacy, gallery fronting Dumaine Street
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Nicolas La Cour House, possibly before 1761, Pointe Coupée
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