Maison Chevalier, in Old Quebec, has been in the headlines since the Musée de la civilization announced its sale to Gestion 1608, a subsidiary of Groupe Tanguay. The heritage community is following with concern the fate of this iconic building, listed 65 years ago, under the reign of Maurice Duplessis. But what heritage are we talking about exactly?
We are at the end of the summer of 1956, in the months which follow the classification of the decrepit buildings of the Îlot Chevalier along the rue du Cul-de-sac in the lower town of Quebec. The Monuments and Historic Sites Commission entrusted the architect André Robitaille (1922-2009) with the survey of the structures it has just acquired. By crossing the porch of this set, the native of Quebec discovers a “slum” of 40 “rooms” with three or four toilets “unspeakably dirty”.
The architect trained at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Institut d’urbanisme de Paris explores this maze of rooms with his team of dissipated workers. “Our employees had a good time measuring, bantering with the girls at the windows across the street who were cheerfully inviting them through the cul-de-sac,” writes Robitaille in an article published in a 1979 newsletter. of the Historic Monuments Commission.
Guided by the archival research of Gérard Morisset, then director of the Musée du Québec, André Robitaille designed in 1957 the model of an 18th century mansion.e century which makes it possible to exploit the atypical outline of the four buildings of the Chevalier block. The project is in the tradition of Viollet-le-Duc, this French architect of the XIXe century which notably worked on the restoration of Notre-Dame-de-Paris.
Extreme curettage
The repair of the Maison Chevalier is carried out with a lot of nail bars. “It came out everywhere, the trucks followed one another … the partitions disappeared, the false floors, the piping and the little electricity which were there”, writes Robitaille in his review article of 1979. The architect is overwhelmed by this. hellish pace: “This work was carried out quickly, too quickly, and at that moment we lost some elements of interest in the building… But how to slow down the demolishers, to control them! “
Robitaille groped around the floors while sections of brick crumbled here and there: “We had neither historians nor archaeologists to help us at this time. Besides […], the proposed use of the building, a museum of crafts and small industry, only partially invited a re-establishment of the old arrangements. “
For the restaurateur at the end of the 1950s, the main thing is to highlight what is “authentic”, starting with the masonry walls, the joist ceilings designed “in the French way” and executed according to “habits. du pays ”and the three vaulted caves in sandstone that withstood the bombardment of General Wolfe in 1759. However, he was careful not to cover the facades with plaster, preferring to leave the stone bare.
“They remade a period interior, but it was Robitaille and Morisset who imagined it”, explains architectural historian Luc Noppen in an interview with The duty. However, the imagination can sometimes play tricks, as evidenced by these latrines inadvertently transformed into a fireplace. “When you see it from the outside, you say to yourself, ‘what is it doing here, this fireplace’, it’s not in a good way,” comments Noppen. “Robitaille recognized it himself. He found a pipe in the wall and said “it’s a fireplace!” He took it up when in fact it was a latrine that went down. The professor at the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at UQAM does not take offense. “There were lots of mistakes like that, it was the beginning of the restoration in Quebec. “
Refrancization
The work of the Chevalier “hotel” was completed in July 1963 with the development of lawns where one of the many grocery stores in the district was located, which now has none. Built at the wrong time, the small red brick shop was demolished in order to clear a courtyard leading to the monumental entrance located on the rear facade of the islet, where there were once annexes of all kinds.
The transformation of a disparate block of houses into a mansion is facilitated by the orientation of its buildings according to a horseshoe plan, which stems from their proximity to the cove of Cul-de-sac, a haven for boats. the time of Champlain which was backfilled in the course of the XIXe century.
The uniqueness of the site is broadly reinforced by Robitaille, who erected a concrete “accompaniment house” to the east of the original buildings, the oldest elements of which date back to the 17th century.e and XVIIIe centuries.
Did not this invasive restoration, to say the least, destroy the heritage value of these buildings? No, retorts Luc Noppen, for whom the Maison Chevalier tells a particular story, that of the refrancization of the capital through its built heritage. “Old Quebec was an entire English city, and it was refrancised in particular by gestures like these,” says the director of partnerships of the Canada Research Chair in Urban Heritage.
With the Maison Chevalier, the Morisset-Robitaille duo wanted to show the world – and especially the writer and French Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux, who inaugurates the place – the state of progress of New France before its conquest. by the British. “We said ‘heritage is also in an urban environment, all these people were rich; look at Jean-Baptiste Chevalier, he bought himself a private mansion like the richest in France in the Marais district ””, underlines Noppen.
The Maison Chevalier was the test bed for what would become the site of the Place Royale, which took off in the 1970s with its mixture of “restoration in style” of old buildings purged of their Victorian substrate and buildings in concrete which today celebrate their half-century of existence.
For Luc Noppen, the main thing is to maintain public access to the Maison Chevalier, its interiors remodeled by André Robitaille which can accommodate an interpretation center relating the complex history of Place Royale. “Whether there is a tourist information office or a tea room, whatever the use, what seems important to me is that the new use maintains the effort that has been made to time to restore it. “