The five-story Montreal City Hall is the seat of local government in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was designed by architects Henri-Maurice Perrault and Alexander Cowper Hutchison, construction on the building began in 1872 and was completed in 1878 and it was built in the Second Empire style. The original building was gutted by fire in March 1922 and only the outer wall survived, it destroyed many of the city’s historic records
Montreal City Hall is located in Old Montreal, at the intersection of Place Jacques-Cartier and Notre Dame Street, at 275 Notre-Dame Street East and south of the Champ de Mars. It dominates the view as Montrealers and visitors alike walk north on the Place Jacques Cartier and has the Lord Nelson monument column, erected in 1809 to commemorate his death at the battle of Trafalgar, standing directly in front of it.
It is from the Montreal City Hall balcony that French President General Charles de Gaulle uttered his famous “Vive le Québec libre” statement (Long live a free Québec) during a state visit in 1967. North of the City Hall on the Champ de Mars, two lines of stone runs across the surface, it is one of the few spots in present-day Montreal where you can still see physical evidence of the fortifications that surrounded the city in older times.
