12 Aug The City Hall of Quebec City

The City Hall of Quebec City

The City Hall of Quebec City was designed and entirely built of stone by the architect Georges-Émile Tanguay in 1896, resulting in an imposing building in the shape of the letter H.

Québec City Hall is located in the heart of Old Quebec on the magnificent Rue des Jardins. The building was designated in November 1984 as a National Historic Site of Canada.

In 1888, ten years following the demolition in 1878 of the former Jesuit College, an educational facility that had been built in 1725, construction of the current Quebec City Hall began on the same grounds. The City of Quebec had, at the time, purchased the highly coveted land from the Government of Quebec that held it. Stone slabs that had been salvaged from the original Jesuit College were included in the façade of the building, as a memorial of the former institution.

Following a design contest, Canadian and American architects were invited to share their visions in order to give a new lease of life to the architecture of Quebec City, as it entered the 20th century.

The Second Empire style was the fashion of the day, however, as none of the sketches followed this style, none were selected, leading to the project being abandoned. It took a new mayor, Simon-Napoléon Parent and his new city council, to restart the project. He commissioned a synthesis of all the architectural designs received a few years earlier during the contest for the new town hall.

The architect Georges-Émile Tanguay took on the task of designing a new blueprint from all the suggested designs received in order to translate the dynamism and the historical character of the city of Quebec.

The result diverged considerably from the Second Empire style. Instead, it became part of an eclectic trend inspired by the neo-style that was typical of American public buildings at the time, yet retained influences from the traditional neoclassical style.