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Bowling Green Bowling Green
designed c. 1905-1913
In the early 20th century, urban dwellers increasingly wanted to escape the unhealthy conditions of the city. Many sought to move permanently to the shores of Lake St. Louis, a site they had come to appreciate as vacationers, and which improved modes of transportation had rendered more accessible. From then on, residential development projects gave Pointe-Claire as a suburb of Montreal.
Of these projects, one in particular stands out. It was launched after the foundation of the Canadian Nursery Company in 1904, under the direction of its American-born president, Frederick G. Todd. Todd was probably the first landscape architect to introduce the concept of the garden-city to Canada. This concept had been established by Ebenezer Howard, a British reformer from a modest background, who sought to combine the needs of urban life and the benefits of a rural context. Two of Howard's projects were realized in England – in Letchworth (1903) and in Welwyn (1919).
Bowling Green, as the Pointe-Claire project was named, constitutes one of Todd's first in Canada. It was laid out from 1905 to 1913 on the site of two farms located to the west of Cedar Avenue. The houses, all built on the same model, lined both sides of a central park comprising a recreational space for residents. The company also set up a tree nursery and a rose garden behind the housing project. Bowling Green represents a small scale model of a garden-city, a concept first elaborated for an average-size city. Such is the case of the Town of Mount Royal project, also developed by Todd from 1912 to 1948.
 ÀAfter 1912, since the greenhouses proved to be less profitable than anticipated, the land was subdivided and new houses were built. Around 1920, there were about a hundred houses on Waverly Avenue and Killarney Gardens.
Frederick G. Todd (1876-1948) designed several projects and public installations across Canada, including the national capital, provincial parks and government buildings. Besides these projects and others, in Québec he drew the plans for the Plains of Abraham (1911), St. Helen's Island (1931-36), Beaver Lake (1936-37), and the Way of the Cross at St. Joseph's Oratory (1945).
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