Ste-Anne’s iconic city hall reopens after major renovations

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Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue’s city hall has reopened after major renovations were done to the building’s interior.

The 161-year-old building on Ste-Anne St. closed in October of 2020 for renovations. Municipal employees and various departments were relocated, and due to the pandemic, some employees were teleworking.

Ste-Anne Mayor Paolo Hawa said the building’s interior was badly in need of renovations.

“We redid electricity, air exchange, heat, cooling,” she said. “We had carpet in there that had to be 20 or 30 years old. It was awful.”

Poor ventilation was another problem, she said.

“In the winter, the employees froze. In the summer, it basically had no air conditioning. The quality of air was awful. People had stuffed noses and all that stuff. It was time to bring it into the modern era.”

Asbestos was also removed from walls.

Hawa said the renovations also led to the discovery of hidden brick walls.

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“Our city hall, way back when, was a post office, fire station, a police station. So when we were doing the renovation to get rid of certain walls, the stuff we found behind that was strange like brick walls we didn’t know existed, and little nooks and crannies.

“Over the past 100 years, people tried to fix it by adding this and adding that. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. We kept one of the brick walls which must have been part of the original building. At some point in time, it was expanded, and that external wall became an internal wall that we didn’t know about. So we kept that. That’s kind of neat.”

The city hall building was built in 1860 as a private residence belonging to the Pilon family. The city of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue acquired the building in 1907 and transformed it into city hall.

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But public council meetings have not been held there for years as the council chambers were deemed too small, said Hawa.

“City hall doesn’t have the space for it, so we now hold council meetings at Harpell Community Centre. They used to be held at city hall but, of course, with time, you need more and more office space. The council room at that time was on the second floor so there is no access to it for people in wheelchairs or (with limited mobility). And you can’t put in an elevator. So everything was moved to Harpell in terms of  public meetings.”

Hawa said the interior renovations cost more than $100,000, not including new furniture. But the mayor said there was never any thought of building a new city hall or moving permanently to another location.

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“It never crossed our minds. That is part of Ste-Anne’s and that’s where it stays.”

The exterior facade of the city hall was renovated in 2013. The work restored the building’s “presence it had in 1935, when it housed a post office and a fire station.”

In 2016, the iconic hose tower atop city hall was demolished despite efforts to preserve it by citizens. Council voted 4-3 to have it demolished instead of restoring it. Hawa voted against the demo.

The hose tower was built in the 1930s and was once used by volunteer firefighters. Leather hoses were hung to dry inside the tower.

jmeagher@postmedia.com