299 apartments, a former hospital and a fairly clear decision against wiping the slate clean: in Montreal's Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough, Provencher_Roy has made the former Grace Dart Institute the starting point for a new residential ensemble. Mellem Grace Dart combines 36 rental apartments within the historic structure with 263 units in a new six-storey building.
The former hospital had been largely unused since the Grace Dart Extended Care Centre relocated in 2016. Rather than clearing the site for an entirely new development, the existing structure was incorporated into the approximately 24,500-square-metre project.
And this is more than a token façade-preservation exercise. The monumental Sherbrooke Street entrance, historic brick façades and wrought-iron elements were retained. The new volumes sit behind the historic building, using contemporary brickwork to reference its material palette and colour without attempting to imitate it.
The project becomes more interesting where the existing building moves beyond serving as an identity-generating backdrop. Its structural grid directly shapes the 36 apartments, allowing for varied layouts and generous ceiling heights. A small café has also been inserted into a former nurses' wing.
Shared amenities extend the residential programme beyond the individual apartments. They include landscaped gardens with fruit trees, fitness areas and a rooftop pavilion with terrace and pool. Landscape architecture is by KUB Paysage, while Blanchette archi.design was responsible for the interiors.
Mellem Grace Dart therefore addresses an increasingly important question in large residential projects: existing buildings are no longer relevant only because heritage rules demand their preservation. They are also a material resource already sitting on the site. Demolition and replacement may sometimes simplify development. Environmentally, that does not automatically make them the better option.
A project-specific life-cycle assessment puts the reduction in environmental impact associated with retaining the historic building at 19 percent. How transferable that figure is to other projects, however, depends on the methodology and reference scenario used in the assessment.
The more relevant point is therefore not the individual percentage but the strategy behind it. Provencher_Roy treats the existing building not as an obstacle to efficient housing production, but as the spatial and historical anchor of a much larger development.
With 36 apartments in the historic building and 263 in the new construction, the relationship is clearly asymmetric. That is precisely what makes the project useful as a case study in combining density with adaptive reuse without forcing old and new architecture into a stylistic compromise.
Mellem Grace Dart was completed in 2025 for developers Maître Carré and TGTA. A largely unused hospital has consequently become neither a preserved architectural relic nor a memory reduced to a façade, but an inhabited part of the city once again.
Project: Mellem Grace Dart
- Location: Montréal, Québec, Canada
- Client: Maître Carré / TGTA
- Area: 264,000 sq. ft. (approx. 24,526 m²)
- Residential units: 299
- Architecture: Provencher_Roy
- Interior Design: Blanchette archi.design
- Landscape Architecture: KUB Paysage
- Electromechanical: Dupras Ledoux
- Structural Engineering: Genimac
- General Contractor: Gerpro
- Completion: 2025
- Photography: Adrien Williams
Old walls, new lives
Provencher_Roy turns hospital into 299 homes
299 apartments, a former hospital and a fairly clear decision against wiping the slate clean: in Montreal's Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough, Provencher_Roy has made the former Grace Dart Institute the starting point for a new residential ensemble. Mellem Grace Dart combines 36 rental apartments within the historic structure with 263 units in a new six-storey building.
The former hospital had been largely unused since the Grace Dart Extended Care Centre relocated in 2016. Rather than clearing the site for an entirely new development, the existing structure was incorporated into the approximately 24,500-square-metre project.
And this is more than a token façade-preservation exercise. The monumental Sherbrooke Street entrance, historic brick façades and wrought-iron elements were retained. The new volumes sit behind the historic building, using contemporary brickwork to reference its material palette and colour without attempting to imitate it.
The project becomes more interesting where the existing building moves beyond serving as an identity-generating backdrop. Its structural grid directly shapes the 36 apartments, allowing for varied layouts and generous ceiling heights. A small café has also been inserted into a former nurses' wing.
Shared amenities extend the residential programme beyond the individual apartments. They include landscaped gardens with fruit trees, fitness areas and a rooftop pavilion with terrace and pool. Landscape architecture is by KUB Paysage, while Blanchette archi.design was responsible for the interiors.
Mellem Grace Dart therefore addresses an increasingly important question in large residential projects: existing buildings are no longer relevant only because heritage rules demand their preservation. They are also a material resource already sitting on the site. Demolition and replacement may sometimes simplify development. Environmentally, that does not automatically make them the better option.
A project-specific life-cycle assessment puts the reduction in environmental impact associated with retaining the historic building at 19 percent. How transferable that figure is to other projects, however, depends on the methodology and reference scenario used in the assessment.
The more relevant point is therefore not the individual percentage but the strategy behind it. Provencher_Roy treats the existing building not as an obstacle to efficient housing production, but as the spatial and historical anchor of a much larger development.
With 36 apartments in the historic building and 263 in the new construction, the relationship is clearly asymmetric. That is precisely what makes the project useful as a case study in combining density with adaptive reuse without forcing old and new architecture into a stylistic compromise.
Mellem Grace Dart was completed in 2025 for developers Maître Carré and TGTA. A largely unused hospital has consequently become neither a preserved architectural relic nor a memory reduced to a façade, but an inhabited part of the city once again.
Project: Mellem Grace Dart
- Location: Montréal, Québec, Canada
- Client: Maître Carré / TGTA
- Area: 264,000 sq. ft. (approx. 24,526 m²)
- Residential units: 299
- Architecture: Provencher_Roy
- Interior Design: Blanchette archi.design
- Landscape Architecture: KUB Paysage
- Electromechanical: Dupras Ledoux
- Structural Engineering: Genimac
- General Contractor: Gerpro
- Completion: 2025
- Photography: Adrien Williams