His house in Montreal's Golden Square Mile is today home to the McGill University Faculty Club.

[1] Alfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten was born on 13 November 1842 in Dresden, the son of Dr Moritz Friedrich Oswald Baumgarten, court physician to John, king of Saxony, and Emmy Zocher, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Carola of Saxony.

[2] Baumgarten attended Dresden High School and Dresden Polytechnic School (where he graduated as a chemist), before studying chemistry at the University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen, during which time he received two years' practical experience at the chemical plant at Schöningen.

[4] Baumgarten began his career as the manager of a sugar beet house at Hamersleben, remaining there until 1866, when he emigrated to the United States.

[1] The company imported raw sugar from the British West Indies and Europe before refining it into a pure substance.

He was also a director of C. Meredith & Company; vice-president of the Montreal Archaeological Institute, and published several essays on chemistry.

By 1915, McConnell was forced to hold a shareholders' meeting to discuss "the serious menace to the welfare of our business caused by hostile publications in the press against certain persons connected with our company".

As well as being made to sell his shares, Baumgarten and his brother-in-law, the vice-president and managing director, Otto Wilhelm Donner, all resigned their positions.

[8][page needed] During the war, Baumgarten contributed generously towards the Canadian Patriotic Fund,[9] and he offered to let his Montreal town house become a convalescent home for disabled soldiers.

[note 1] In 1895, he purchased a large house at Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, which eventually had stables and galleries and dominated the hillside overlooking the lake.

[1] The house had a modest exterior, but the interior was sumptuously decorated and boasted a 'sunken bathtub' (an indoor swimming pool), the first in the city.

[1][12] The Gothic Gallery, which spanned two stories of the house, was designed to resemble a German hunting lodge and was covered by an immense, amber-coloured stained glass skylight.

[2] From 1882 to 1887, he was the Master of Foxhounds for the Montreal Hunt, rejuvenating the club after the departure of British troops from Canada in 1870.