Bibliothèque Félicité-Angers, Neuville

The parish of Saint-François-de-Sales was established on the banks of the St Lawrence by Bishop of Quebec François de Laval in 1684. On this occasion, an earlier wooden church was replaced with a larger stone edifice. The population however continued to refer to the parish by its earlier name, Pointe-aux-Trembles, inspired by its location near a small peninsula covered in birch trees. It is now part of the municipality of Neuville.

In 1717, the parish was gifted an intricately sculpted canopy, initially made for the episcopal chapel but sent to Pointe-aux-Trembles in gratitude for delivering wheat to the poor of Quebec during a food shortage. Together with the choir (1761-1763), this baroque canopy is reported to be the oldest religious art ensemble in Canada and has remained intact to this day. In 1802, it was completed with an altar by sculptor François Baillairgé.

During the 19th century, the church gained in importance and was enlarged several times. The current nave is attributed to woodworker Toussaint Vézina and stonemason Augustin-David Dussault and was completed in 1856.

In 2017, the church was partly converted into a library and cultural space. The project was complicated by the need to preserve the choir canopy, a listed cultural asset, as well as maintain part of the space for church services and cultural events. The original solution chosen by Diana Cardas was a re-configurable glass enclosure that either separates the library from the rest of the hall or moves to close off shelves on either side of the nave when the library is closed. In the latter configuration, the central reading room becomes part of the nave again. The project received the heritage prize in 2019.

The library is named after local painter Félicité Angers, not to be confused with the writer and journalist of the same name.

The images shown here were taken during a visit in March 2022.

This post is part of a series on adaptive reuse in libraries. See the list of such projects I am maintaining or view other posts in this series.

References