An Old Montreal condo filled with bold new accents

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81 Rue De Brésoles, No. 505/506, Montréal

Asking price: $1,395,000

Monthly maintenance fees: $935

Size: 1,727 square feet

Listing agent: Jeff Lee, Engel & Völkers Montreal

The back story

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If life was a book, then the apartment in the historic Old Montreal neighbourhood could be titled the “pandemic years” chapter of Francis Gosselin’s story.

He was selling his old apartment in the city’s Mile End area just days into the full-force arrival of COVID-19 in Canada, back in March, 2020. Shopping for this apartment was a somewhat surreal ordeal typified by restrictions and precautions that feel almost superstitious as our society cautiously comes out of pandemic times many months later.

“The couple who owned this before us were terrified of catching COVID – not that I wasn’t – but we had to visit with all the doors open and all the drawers pulled out and wear gloves,” Mr. Gosselin said.

The apartment wasn’t that old – the building was finished in 2005 – but the couple wanted a more contemporary style and so carried out a gut renovation of the space, spending much of their time out of the city while they did the work. When it was all finished they hunkered down as vaccines changed the game and the pandemic began to recede in 2021. Now, the couple is expecting a child and the next chapter requires another new space.

The apartment today

The apartment doesn’t open directly into the living space like you’d expect in a smaller condo. Instead, a small foyer takes a left turn to run down a short hallway lined with closets, a powder room, laundry closet and storage. At the end of the hallway the main living space opens to the right, and down a short corridor to the left is the main bedroom.

It’s a corner unit and the main living space is a wide open L-shaped room that is filled with light from the two walls of windows. The building is across the street from the Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal and the apartment’s windows start at the roofline, providing views that make for a portrait-wall of Gothic revival architectural details. On the other side, if you look out the right window, Mr. Gosselin says you can also see the iconic modernist Habitat 67 project by Moshe Safdie across the harbour.

“We redid the entire kitchen,” Mr. Gosselin said, filling it with natural wood on the lower cabinets and bright white on the uppers, hallmarks of the Cuisine Steam design team that specializes in contemporary kitchens. Everything in the space is contemporary, including the light fixtures that hang above the island – three skinny black circles with LEDs on the inner rim – which were found by friends of the couple who own a lighting store. “They said, ‘You have to see these new LED lights!,’” which they had spotted at a lighting trade show in Texas. “At first my girlfriend hated it, but when people come they say it’s actually quite fabulous.”

Another bold fixture is the chandelier above the dining room table, that takes the familiar spring-balanced desk lamp (a common feature of early Bauhaus apartments) and mounts more than a dozen of them in black around a ring to make something that looks like a cross between a spider and a robot.

The living room is separated from the dining space by a low bureau running behind a long sectional couch, with TV and media equipment on the far wall. Tucked next to the couch is a doorway to a second bathroom with a stand-alone glass-walled shower and white walls and tiles, except for the dark grey floor tile that extends onto the surround for the soaker tub.

All the windows in the apartment have unpainted wood frames and other than the bathrooms all the floors are done in the same hardwood; these natural elements balance with the uniformly white walls and the industrial exposed concrete ceilings.

The previous owners were a couple with children and the space used to be more chopped up. Mr. Gosselin’s renovation did away with two bedrooms leaving essentially an office at the end of the hallway behind the kitchen (which could serve as a small bedroom) and one very large primary bedroom suite.

If the primary bedroom suite feels huge, that’s because it used to be its own apartment. “The previous owner, they bought this other unit, and got an engineer to make a passageway between the two,” Mr. Gosselin said. In the course of his own renovation he was able to find an extra couple of square feet in walls that were previously over-engineered to serve as a fire and sound break between the formerly separate units. “They had left everything that belonged to the old kitchen behind the walls, there were a lot of surprises when we decided to open it up.”

The length of the bedroom – 25 feet – is accentuated by a wall of shelving that runs from window wall to doorway, behind which is the ensuite bathroom and a second door to the hallway. The ensuite has a double vanity, rain shower and a walk-in closet tucked behind.

The only other feature of note is a parking spot with an electric charger and the option to buy a second spot.

The neighbourhood

Tourists love Old Montreal, though some locals may have a more conflicted relationship about living in a protected heritage zone. “They never thought they would live in Old Montreal,” said listing agent Jeff Lee of his clients. “I cannot describe it, it is a very different animal. … You feel like you’re going to find treasures, it feels like it’s always Christmas in this area.”

There are dozens of restaurants nearby, lots of specialty shops, not to mention all the souvenir places and street performers in the summer. There’s also the year-round attractions of the nearby Old Port. Of course, over the last two years it’s been unusually quiet.

More to Mr. Gosselin’s taste a half block away is Saint-Paul Street, which has dozens of art galleries in a kilometre-long stretch. Mr. Gosselin is something of an amateur collector, and a triptych of paintings by local artist Olivier Corno (a.k.a. simply Olicorno) hangs in Mr. Gosselin’s bedroom. “I bought them from him when he was a kid, when I could afford them, before his career completely exploded,” he said. The next owner might have the same luck strolling down Saint-Paul.

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