Plateau Mont-Royal

This guide to Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal explains why nearly every rowhouse here wears a spiraling iron staircase outside instead of indoors: an 1865 firewall bylaw that squeezed houses to twenty-five feet apart, followed by a setback rule that opened a strip of unbudgeted space along the sidewalk. It follows the population boom that forced these decisions and the builders who chose to rent every indoor square foot rather than waste it on stairwells. Listen for how a cost-cutting trick got dressed up in cast beavers and maple leaves.