This store-residence was built in 1837. In 1833, Louis-Tancrède Bouthillier, a potash inspector, acquired some of the properties belonging to his deceased parents, including this lot on St. Paul Street with a two-storey stone house and outbuildings. Four years later, Bouthillier hired mason Louis Comte to build this stone store-residence, which was originally divided into two unequal parts. The first lease found for this building dates from 1846, when Robert Graham, a stationer and bookbinder, moved into the larger, eastern portion. As the tax assessment rolls clearly indicate, Graham worked and lived on the premises, with the ground floor being devoted to his business and the upper storeys to his residence. This same pattern of use very likely characterized the western part of the building.

This combined business and residential function continued for several decades as a variety of tenants followed one after the other: shopkeepers of various sorts – including booksellers, stationers, a fur merchant – as well as small manufacturers, particularly of tobacco. By the 1870s, at the latest, the upper storeys no longer provided housing for tenants but were entirely devoted to commercial uses. About the same time, presumably to better accommodate growing business needs, a four-storey brick addition was built in the back, on the west side. In 1890, Bouthillier's heirs sold the building.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the building again changed its function as manufacturing and warehousing became dominant. The Stuart Brothers Company, a manufacturing firm producing essential oils and food flavours, owned and occupied the premises between 1919 and 1946. Already in possession of the warehouse-store to the rear, facing onto Place D'Youville, the new owner built an addition before 1940 to unify the buildings in a single block. The property subsequently belonged to the veterinary laboratories of Dr. Léo Lorrain for more than 25 years.

In 1979, the block was transformed into a condominium complex known as La Petite Cour, comprising shops, offices and housing.

This store-residence is provided with a rear courtyard, entered by a passageway from St. François-Xavier Street. The building itself consists of three stories, with an additional half-storey in the garret. The original roof, probably a pitched one, was replaced before 1880 by a mansard roof with dormers; sometime later the rear portion was replaced with a flat roof. The common walls have integrated chimneys, a traditional characteristic. A fire-break wall, which can be seen rising above the roof, originally divided the building into two unequal parts.

This building preserves certain elements of 18th-century urban houses in Montreal, however the use of cut stone to cover the whole front facing the street was an innovation in the 19th century, as was the use of more elaborate architectural details to draw attention to ground-floor businesses; both features are characteristic of the store-residences erected in the years 1825-1850. The arcade, with its series of segmented arches and rusticated stonework – borrowings from the vocabulary of classical architecture –, accentuates the large openings that were originally fitted out with mullioned show-windows. The latter made their first appearance in Montreal during the 1820s and served to display a merchant’s new wares. In keeping with the prominence of the street front, the upper stories were covered with ashlar, but the restrained treatment of the stone and the size of the window openings still suggest the residential function of this space. As in houses erected during the 18th century, the symmetrically arranged windows diminish in size from one storey to the next.

In this structure each tenant originally had an entrance that served the commercial activities of a shopkeeper or craftsman, and provided access to the household’s living space above. Since the late 1970s, a single entrance serves the shops and apartments in this building, which has again become a store-residence.