Meanwhile, all desired to contribute to the continuation of the work; some offered money, others materials, still others their labour. In their ardour the priests of the seminary had the old fort, which was falling into ruins, demolished in order to use the wood and stone for the new building. As lords of the island, they seemed to have the incontestable right to dispose of an edifice which was their private property. But M. de Bretonvilliers, to whom they referred the matter, took them to task for their haste, and according to his instructions the work of demolition was stopped, not to be resumed until ten years later. The colonists had an ardent desire to see their church finished, but they were poor, and, though a collection had brought in, in 1676, the sum of two thousand seven hundred francs, the work dragged along for two years more, and was finished only in 1678. "The church had," says M. Morin, "the form of a Roman cross, with the lower sides ending in a circular apse; its portal, built of hewn stone, was composed of two designs, one Tuscan, the other Doric; the latter was surmounted by a triangular pediment. This beautiful entrance, erected in 1722, according to the plans of Chaussegros de Léry, royal engineer, was flanked on the right side by a square tower crowned by a campanile, from the summit of which rose a beautiful cross with _fleur-de-lis_ twenty-four feet high. This church was built in the axis of Notre-Dame Street, and a portion of it on the Place d'Armes; it measured, in the clear, one hundred and forty feet long, and ninety-six feet wide, and the tower one hundred and forty-four feet high. It was razed in 1830, and the tower demolished in 1843."
Montreal continued to progress, and therefore to build. The Sulpicians, finding themselves cramped in their old abode, began in 1684 the construction of a new seigniorial and chapter house, of one hundred and seventy-eight feet frontage by eighty-four feet deep. These vast buildings, whose main façade faces on Notre-Dame Street, in front of the Place d'Armes, still exist. They deserve the attention of the tourist, if only by reason of their antiquity, and on account of the old clock which surmounts them, for though it is the most ancient of all in North America, this clock still marks the hours with average exactness. Behind these old walls extends a magnificent garden.