McLennan Library Building
building and library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The McLennan Library Building is a major library building of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 3459 rue McTavish (McTavish Street), at the northeast corner of rue Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke Street) and McTavish. The building, along with the adjacent Redpath Library Building, currently houses the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, the largest branch of the McGill University Library.
History
The McLennan Library Building stands on the site of Jesse Joseph's former mansion, named Dilcoosha, in the Golden Square Mile. Joseph was a prominent Montreal businessman, philanthropist and member of the city's Jewish community, and he died in 1904. The mansion later served as a Canadian Officers' Training Corps headquarters during World War I and afterwards as the first home of the McCord Museum. The mansion was demolished in 1955.
The current seven-storey reinforced concrete structure was built between 1967 and 1969. It was designed in the Brutalist style by the firm of Dobush, Stewart and Bourke, who designed McGill's Stewart Biological Sciences Building and Ernest Rutherford Physics Building. The firm also worked on designing the city's Cadillac Metro station.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “McLennan Library Building” as building and library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as building and library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6802196. VIAF identifies the subject as 148840414. The Library of Congress control number is n85303504. Authority coordinates are 45.503, -73.576. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1955, 1967 and 1969.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “McLennan Library Building”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow McLennan Library Building primary sources, McLennan Library Building archive and McLennan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “McLennan Library Building”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “McLennan Library Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.