The same corner for sixty years
Le Chabrol has changed its name several times and its owners rather less often. What has not changed is the address, or the fact that it has never belonged to a chain.
It opened as the Le Cavalier
The building went up on Saint-Jacques Ouest in 1962 as the Le Cavalier Hotel-Motel, at a moment when the motel was still a modern idea in Montréal and this stretch of road carried most of the traffic heading west out of the city.
It was built for people passing through. Sixty years on, a good number of guests still arrive by car, which is why the parking has never been given up for anything else.
A 1974 guide to the city still lists it as the Cavalier Motel, 6951 Saint-Jacques ouest.
Then the sign said Suites
The Cavalier became the Hôtel-Motel & Suites Idéal at the first of the building’s renovations, the point at which suites entered the house and, as the sign shows, went onto the pylon directly under the name.
Little else about the address changed. The same two-storey brick range, the same doors opening onto the same parking. What the Idéal added was a kind of room the Cavalier had never offered, and it is the one the hotel is still known for.
The Cavalier name was still on the building in 1974. The year the Idéal sign replaced it is not recorded.
The face it still has
The second reworking is the one that produced the building guests arrive at now: fieldstone across the front, an arched parapet above it, and a copper-capped tower at the corner. Le Chablis went up in steel letters on the stone, and again on the pylon at the kerb.
What came after was a change of name rather than a change of building. The massing, the roadside sign and the street number, 6951, are the ones on Saint-Jacques Ouest today.
The Chablis name dates from about 2008.
And now, Le Chabrol
The same pylon at the kerb, the same 6951 above it, the same stone behind. Only the panel between them was repainted, in about 2013.
Sixty rooms, suites with a jacuzzi in the room, a front desk staffed around the clock, and the parking still where it has always been, on the corner the house started on, and under the fourth name it has answered to.
Four names, one address
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1962
Le Cavalier Hotel-Motel
The original house, built for the westbound traffic on Saint-Jacques.
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Before 2008
Hôtel-Motel & Suites Idéal
The first of the renovations, and the first suites. The building was still the Cavalier in 1974.
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About 2008
Le Chablis Saint-Jacques
A second reworking of the building, and the front it still has.
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About 2013
Hôtel Le Chabrol
Sixty rooms, suites with a private jacuzzi, and a front desk staffed around the clock.
The western end of Saint-Jacques
Le Chabrol stands at the far west of Saint-Jacques Ouest, on a working stretch of road rather than a picturesque one. A supermarket faces the door across four lanes, and the ramps onto Autoroute 20 and 720 are a minute away.
That is the trade this address makes. No bar under the window and no queue at two in the morning, but a car park that was never given up, and downtown ten minutes east. Guests here are mostly people who arrived driving.
Residential Notre-Dame-de-Grâce begins a few streets north, with its brick triplexes, outdoor staircases and the shops along Sherbrooke Ouest. Cavendish Mall and the MUHC Glen site are each about ten minutes by car.
Still independent, still on the same corner
Booking direct puts you in touch with the front desk rather than an agency.