St. Ann's Academy

Quebec architecture is as much a tradition as it is a style and as with all traditions it is very hard to pin down. Nevertheless, there are a few general observations we can make about French Canadian architecture.

Buildings in the Quebec tradition are steep-roofed structures with thick walls and fairly plain facades. Openings are few and widely spaced.

Ornamentation rarely exists and if it does it is usually confined to mouldings around the door. Casement windows are a hallmark characteristic of Quebec tradition. Older buildings, seventeenth and eighteenth century, can have as many as twelve panes per side. The most striking feature of these buildings are their steep roofs. They can occupy as much as one third of the elevation. In the seventeenth century these were typically hip roofs but as time went on they were replaced by gable roofs. Dormers commonly stud the slopes of these roofs. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries emphasis was placed on symmetry under the growing influence of classicism.