The terrible fire of 1852 triggered a real development of the district. Along Saint-Denis Street, single-family row houses with stone facades were mostly rebuilt. The new stone houses were monumental and Victorian.
The letters of nobility to this “reborn” district, with the installation of the first French Canadian university in 1876 (subsidiary of Laval University) which will become in 1919 the University of Montreal. The faculties of theology, law and medicine were located there.
The good French-speaking bourgeois society soon gravitated towards the institution and settled there. It was the very heart of what was to become known as the Quartier Latin, which in its Parisian etymology refers to the district where the university was located and where the teaching was given in Latin.
The Quartier Latin emanated an undeniable vitality and prestige. The École Polytechnique (1905) and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (1907) were later established there. The cultural vocation was reinforced by the opening of the Saint-Sulpice library in 1915, the Théâtre Saint-Denis in 1916, as well as the presence of numerous bookstores. At the start of the 20th century, leaders, magistrates, men of letters and students were frequent visitors to the sidewalk cafés, bookstores, tobacco shops and pubs of Montreal’s Quartier Latin, which was then reputed to be the main intellectual and cultural center of French-speaking America. The neighborhood became more and more affluent.
Many religious communities also settled in the area, such as the Soeurs du Bon Pasteur, the Soeurs de la Miséricorde, the Soeurs de la Providence and the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes, while the Holy Trinity Memorial Anglican Church (1864) and the Royal Alexandra School are evidence of a certain British presence.
New buildings reflect the notoriety of the Quartier Latin: banks, businesses such as Dupuis Frères, and Beaux-Arts-inspired skyscrapers.
