Numerous residential buildings were built between 1880 and 1920. The workers who worked in the many plants located in the Lachine Canal zone lived in two-or three-storey, brick buildings, several of which had stores on the ground floor. In addition to the workers’ buildings, there were also abundantly decorated semi-detached houses that belonged to specialized workers and the local middle-class
The population of Irish origin settled permanently in the Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood. Intense housing construction transformed the area which had not been urbanized to any large extent prior to that. Developers purchased land, particularly land formerly owned by the Congrégation de Notre-Dame and used for agriculture, sub-divided it, and sold it to contractors who built brick row houses to house the working-class population. The neighbourhood took on the appearance of an industrial British suburb.
