Le Mount Stephen

A Railway Baron’s House, and the Tower Behind It

Rue Drummond climbs from Sainte-Catherine toward the mountain, and halfway up it the Golden Square Mile still shows what Montreal money looked like when the railway was being built. The grandest survivor on that street is the house George Stephen raised for himself, a neo-Renaissance block of sculpted grey limestone that took several years to finish. Stephen ran the Bank of Montreal and then the Canadian Pacific Railway, and he spent accordingly. The house later became a gentlemen’s club for the better part of a century, and it now anchors a hotel whose bedrooms are in a glass tower behind it.

Why It Works

We keep this one because the split between old and new is honest. The mansion is a National Historic Site of Canada and a classified Quebec monument, and it is used as a mansion should be, for eating, drinking and sitting, rather than being carved into bedrooms. The tower behind takes care of the modern part, quietly. It is a Leading Hotels of the World address and the MICHELIN Guide lists it, which matters less than the simple fact that you can walk from a contemporary room into ten fireplaces and hand painted glass in under a minute.

Why This Location

The Golden Square Mile is the calm quarter of downtown Montreal, a grid of nineteenth century stone between the shopping of Sainte-Catherine and the slope of Mount Royal. Rue Crescent and rue de la Montagne, with their restaurants and bars, are a block or two away, and the Museum of Fine Arts sits at the top of rue Sherbrooke within a short walk. Peel and Guy-Concordia metro stations put the rest of the city within a few stops. The whole point of staying here is being able to do an evening on foot and come home to a quiet street.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Heritage, clubbable, discreet, grown up

• Rooms: 90 rooms and suites in the contemporary tower behind the mansion

• Best For: Couples on a city break, heritage and architecture travellers, business stays that want somewhere to entertain

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The stained glass by Gibbs of London and Edmundson of Manchester, to designs by Henry Holiday, Shakespearean scenes and all

• Dining: Bar George, a British inspired restaurant and bar set in the historic rooms of the mansion

• Amenities: Fitness facilities, wellness treatments, on site and private parking, pets accepted, heritage event rooms

• Attractions: The Museum of Fine Arts up rue Sherbrooke, rue Crescent a block away, Mount Royal above the quarter, Sainte-Catherine shopping below it

Rooms in the New Building, Evenings in the Old One

The tower rooms are deliberately understated, dark wood and low contrast, built for sleeping and working rather than for competing with the house next door. Suites run larger with sitting areas and better light, and the upper floors look over the slate roofs of the quarter toward the mountain. What makes the arrangement work is the short walk: guests cross from a modern corridor into the mansion for dinner or a drink, which gives an ordinary evening a sense of occasion that no amount of decoration inside a bedroom could buy.

Bar George, Under the Painted Glass

The restaurant takes the mansion’s ground floor and its name from the man who built it. The cooking is British in inspiration, which sounds like an odd choice in Montreal until you sit in a room panelled by a Scottish joiner under windows made in London. The dining rooms keep the original woodwork, the fireplaces and the glass, and the bar spills into what were once the club’s reception rooms. It draws Montrealers as well as guests, which is the mark of a hotel restaurant worth eating in.

The Craftsmanship Worth Looking For

Take ten minutes before dinner and walk the ground floor slowly. The woodwork is Cuban mahogany, oak, maple, walnut, cherry and satinwood, cut and fitted by Archibald McIntyre to the architect’s drawings, and the floors carry walnut inlay in oak. Ten fireplaces survive, each in different materials. The windows are the best of it: allegorical figures, Shakespearean scenes, and in the old dining room a series given over to fish, meat, poultry and fruit. Few hotels anywhere let you look at work of this order on the way to a table.