Van Horne Mansion
The Van Horne Mansion () was a classic greystone house on Sherbrooke Street at the corner of Stanley Street in Montreal's Golden Square Mile. It was built in 1869 for John Hamilton, President of the Merchant's Bank of Montreal, Quebec. In 1889, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, President of the Canadian Pacific Railway, purchased the property and it remained in his family until it was controversially demolished in 1973. Despite the public outcry over its proposed destruction, Mayor Jean Drapeau declared that it could not be preserved for cultural reasons as it was not part of Quebec's culture, its history being Anglo Canadian, not French Canadian. With Drapeau's support, it was bulldozed in the middle of the night by developer David Azrieli, who replaced it with a concrete tower block. The Sofitel Hotel today stands at the spot once occupied by the Van Horne mansion. History Van Horne hired Bruce Price's architectural firm, who had done much of the work for the Canadian Pacific Railway, to enlarge the old Hamilton's Italianate house to fifty-two rooms. Hamilton had hired architect John William Hopkins (also with Daniel Berkley Wily) and was completed in 1869. It was Edward Colonna (died 1948), an architect