Artworks

This painting by Little has conserved for posterity what urban planners of the 1950s and 1960s could not. In the distance there is already the blight represented by McGill University’s McIntyre Medical Building, built in 1965, hiding Montreal's most sacred heritage, Mount Royal. The Sir William Van Horne Mansion at the corner of Sherbrooke Street, a snippet of which is seen at the intersection on the right-hand side was demolished four years after Little painted this composition. Its demolition became a strong catalyst to increase the support for conservation of the built heritage in the City of Montreal. While The Mount Royal Club remains untouched (at the intersection on the upper left) and the Lord Atholstan House (in the lower left quadrant) was saved in the late 1970s by the wisdom and appreciation of David Culver as head of Alcan, to the north of Stanley and behind the Club a handful of architecturally uninspired and tall apartment buildings have masked views of Mount Royal from this perspective.