Sillery Heritage Site


The Sillery Heritage Site, formerly known as the Sillery Historic District, is a territory containing historic residential and institutional properties, as well as woodlands, located in the Sainte-Foy–Sillery–Cap-Rouge borough of Quebec City, Canada. It is one of four heritage sites which are located in the City of Quebec. Having been called the "cradle of the Quebec nation," it includes approximately 350 buildings situated on a linear wide landscape, which is alongside, as well as an integral part of the coast of the Saint Lawrence River. The built environment was constructed in all of the time periods, including and following the foundation of New France.
Amongst the district's properties are the early Jesuit House of Sillery, workers' homes on Foulon Road and the Sillery coast, villas built by wood barons in the, and institutional properties built at the turn of the.
Heritage designation began as early as, when the Jesuit House was assigned protective status. The entire territory was officially recognized as a heritage site by the Government of Quebec on. The heritage site was placed on the Parks Canada's administered Canadian Register of Historic Places, also known as Canada's Historic Places, on. The site's provincial heritage registry listing includes five categorical groups of associated elements: 627 heritage immovable / real property assets, nine associated movable heritage objects, 18 related commemorative plaques, two associated groups, and three associated people.
While recognizing the visionary action taken by Quebec's Ministry of Culture, in the s, by conferring historic status upon the district to protect it from suburban developers, the National Trust for Canada, a registered charity, placed the Sillery Historic District on its Top 10 Endangered Places list, in the early s, due to the approval of condominium developments which encroached upon historic religious properties in the district. In, the City of Quebec announced that it would encourage any future developers to restore historic religious structures which were no longer owned by their former communities, in exchange for the allowance to undertake development on the surrounding lands. The city argued that some development was necessary to provide tax revenue in order to sustain the preservation of the historic district. The Trust has subsequently removed the Sillery Historic District from its endangered list, and archived its status as a past listing, amongst other properties, spread across all of Canada's provinces and territories.

Historic properties located on the heritage site