It's not by chance that the upscale Montreal neighbourhood of Westmount boasts one of the most opulent and unadulterated collections of Victorian architecture in Canada. No vinyl siding, no steel front doors, no PVC balcony railings have ever sullied the city's houses. Since the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the sunny southwestern slope of Mount Royal was being transformed from bucolic farmland into a bourgeois suburb of row houses, apartment buildings and elegant hillside mansions, Westmount has been proud of its streetscapes.

It is the city's steadfast — some would say iron-fisted — determination to preserve its architecture that led the federal government to name Westmount as a historically significant site last month.

In bestowing the prestigious designation, Parks Canada described it as one of Canada's iconic neighbourhoods, lauding the city for its long-standing role in safeguarding its architectural heritage, which is "emblematic of the Victorian and post-Victorian suburb in Canada."

That Westmount is so very Victorian may come as a surprise. Most people think of fancy fretwork and gingerbread details when they think of Victoriana. But the architecture of the Victorian era embraces a panoply of styles and inspirations. It covers not only the whimsically painted row houses of Lewis, Abbott and Irvine Streets, below St. Catherine Street, but also Westmount's classical stone mansions, its mansard-roofed townhouses, and fancy brick Queen Anne grandes dames with their sprawling balconies and stained glass windows.

"The so-called Victorian house that people usually think of, with its gingerbread fretwork and exuberant decoration, is just one of many styles of Victorian architecture," explained architect Bruce Anderson, who has been a leading force in the conservation of Westmount's architectural heritage, as he takes a visitor on a walking tour.

Our stroll through lower Westmount one morning last week was like a trip back in time. The houses here seem little changed from their early days — on the outside at least. Just south of Sherbrooke Street West, on the west side of Metcalfe Street, sits an attached row of five brick and sandstone houses, perfectly preserved examples of the eclectic and picturesque style of Victorian architecture known as Queen Anne, with Tudor half timbers in the gables and intricately carved lintels above the doorways. Just down the street, a stucco British colonial cottage with a rambling porch and an octagonal tower bears witness to another expression of Victorian style, with its classical paired columns and arched windows.

Walk a little farther still and there's a set of paired houses in one more Victorian style popular in Montreal in the late 1800s: the Second Empire style. It features a mansard roof in multi-coloured slate and ornate wrought iron crestings. Around the corner on de Maisonneuve Boulevard, yet another face of Victoriana reveals itself in the facade of a pair of sombre Gothic revival houses with pointed-arch appliques and deep-set doorways.

"Over the 70-year period that we think of as Victorian, things changed stylistically, from the symmetrical classical style preferred by the barons of industry in the mid-1800s to the exuberance of the late Victorian period, which includes Queen Anne and exotic Moorish and Hindi styles, with their domes and colours," Anderson explained.