[1] In 1889, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, President of the Canadian Pacific Railway, purchased the property and it remained in his family until it was controversially demolished in 1973.

[2] Van Horne hired Bruce Price's architectural firm, who had done much of the work for the Canadian Pacific Railway, to enlarge the old Hamilton's Italianate house to fifty-two rooms.

[3] It was Edward Colonna (died 1948), an architect who had previously worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany before being hired by Price, who carried out the alterations to the Van Horne house.

[4] Van Horne claimed to like homes "big and bulky like myself",[5] but he had one of the best private art and pottery collections in North America and wanted a house he could share with it.

The building was damaged by a fire on Monday, April 3, 1933, which led to the loss of part of Van Horne's private art collection.

[9] Journalist William Weintraub includes the house and its demolition in his 1993 documentary, The Rise and Fall of English Montreal, identifying the significance of the building to the local Anglo community's heritage.