Photo credit: “Edificio Henry Morgan, Montreal, Canadá, 2017-08-11, DD 43 ” by Diego Delso, delso.photo. CC BY-SA.
For 134 years, the building at 585 Sainte-Catherine Street West anchored Montreal’s downtown retail core. Built between 1889 and 1891 to a design by architect John Pierce Hill, the building opened as the flagship of Henry Morgan’s department store chain, its impressive Romanesque façade constructed of red sandstone imported from Scotland. Hudson’s Bay Company acquired the Morgan’s chain in 1960, though the Quebec stores kept the Morgan’s name until 1972, when the Montreal flagship was rebranded as La Baie/The Bay. Direct access to the Montreal Metro’s McGill station helped the store remain a downtown staple. The store closed permanently in 2025 after Hudson’s Bay Company declared bankruptcy, with assets like the Montreal Bay store to be liquidated.
In September 2025, the James Bay Eeyou Corporation, a Cree-owned economic development corporation founded in 1986, partnered with developer JHD Immobilier to propose acquiring and redeveloping the building into a mixed-use site, including an Indigenous cultural centre. The sale, however, has not proceeded and the building sits vacant.
Montreal’s Bay building joins a growing list of former Hudson’s Bay flagships whose fates have diverged since the company’s collapse. Winnipeg’s 1926 Bay building (the largest poured reinforced-concrete building in Canada when built, and once the company’s central Canadian flagship) was added to the National Trust’s Endangered Places List in 2021 and is now undergoing development by the Manitoba Southern Chiefs’ Organization into a housing and service hub. By contrast, Calgary’s 1913 Bay building, added to the list in 2025, remains vacant without formal heritage designation.
Location: Montreal, QC
Endangered Places List: 2026
Status: Endangered
