 |
| Charles MacLean |
The next time you venture the Pointe Claire Library in the magnificent Stewart Hall on Lakeshore Boul., you might want to consider that the building only got built because of a gruesome tragedy that saw two females from a very wealthy and powerful family die on what should have been a joyous day.
Stewart Hall was originally built about a century ago by a guy named Charlie MacLean, a guy from the Point.
How'd a hunky-athletic son of Scottish immigrants get all that loot?
He married Martha Fulford, who then died in childbirth, and the baby also died a couple of days later, leaving Charlie with all of her money.
Martha Fulford was wealthy because she was the daughter of George Fulford, who invented the Little Pink Pills, basically iron supplements, that were hugely profitable.
George Taylor Fulford was born in Brockville and settled there even after he made his fortune and he built a similar house before dying in 1905 in a car crash. That crash was said by some to be the first-ever motor car accident fatality.
Fulford's grandson has a theory that the accident was no accident, but that's a story for another time.
After his wife Martha died, Charlie became mayor of Brockville but relocated to Montreal and built this big farm house.
MacLean remarried had a few kids, all of whom became socialites flitting around from Europe and back all thanks to money made by G. T. Fulford, their father's father-in-law from his first wife.
Eventually MacLean sold the Mull House, as he called it, to some religious types called the Pere de Saint Croix.
The magnificent property was evaluated at over $1 million but MacLean sold it to the religious order for only $80,000 in 1940.
He did this because he knew that the religious organization would not be required to pay taxes on it, as places of worship benefit from a municipal tax exemption.
The order held it for 18 years. The municipality then took it over and spent years not really knowing what to do with it but now it's a prime spot for cultural events and a library.
No!
ReplyDeleteStewart House on Lakeshore Road.
ReplyDeleteIsn't this what happened?
ReplyDeleteIn 1940 the Fathers of Sainte-Croix acquired the property for a noviciate and continued to farm. The sale of the property in the 1950s excluded the four-acres of the estate on which the mansion stands. These were bought by May Beatrice Stewart, who sold them for thesymbolic amount of $1.00 to the city of Pointe-Claire. The mansion was restored in 1962 by architectural firm of Papineau-Gérin-Lajoie-Leblanc. The official opening of Stewart Hall was held on February 16, 1963.
that's exactly what happened.
ReplyDeleteThat was the 'hearsay' when I lived next to the "Priests Farm" in the 1950s (where I got my first kitten as a teenager). Many of us knew the Stewart kids, and the family were well respected as "contributors" (e.g. "the young Mrs. Stewart" volunteering at the Anglican church). Seems appropriate that Stewart Hall has been such an important part of Pointe Claire's cultural life.
Delete