The rise and fall of Le Palais des Nains, the palace where tourists became giants

On Rachel Street East, across the street from La Banquise and next door to the Montreal microbrewery outpost of Pit Caribou, there used to be two stone lions guarding an empty lot since 1926, weathered by decades of Montreal winters. Gone now, replaced by a three-storey condo building, it was once the site of one of the city's strangest tourist attractions: Le Palais des Nains, also known as the Midget's Palace.

For over six decades, tour buses pulled up to 961 Rachel Est, disgorging visitors who paid their dimes to spend an hour feeling like giants in a world built for people three feet tall. Inside, Philippe and Rose Nicol had created something a fully functional home where every piece of furniture, doorknob, and mirror was scaled down to their size. Tourists had to crouch to see their reflections, couldn't sit on the chairs without crushing them, and found themselves bumping their heads on deliberately lowered ceilings.

It was spectacle, sure. But it was also a subversive place where the traditional dynamics of who watches and who performs got flipped entirely on its head.

Learning the business from P.T. Barnum

Philippe Adélard Nicol knew the entertainment business better than most. Born about three hours from Montreal in Saint-Henri-de-Lévis on September 27, 1881, he was the only one in his large family born with dwarfism. His father stood 6'3", his mother 5'9", but Philippe would never grow taller than three feet. In an era when few career paths existed for people with disabilities, the circus beckoned.

By age three, Philippe was already touring with some of America's biggest shows: Barnum & Bailey, Forepaugh & Sells Brothers. He was performing as much as he was learning the fundamentals of showmanship, marketing, and most importantly, how to control his own narrative from P.T. Barnum himself.

While other performers remained at the mercy of circus managers, Philippe started selling autographed photos at his shows—a side business that earned him more than his salary.

The young performer gave himself the theatrical title "Count Philippe Nicol" following the tradition of famous little people like General Tom Thumb and Commodore Nutt. There wasn't a word for it then, but there is one now: Brand building.

In 1906, through Joseph-Octave Champagne, the manager of Montreal strongman Louis Cyr, Philippe met Rose Dufresne in Lowell, Massachusetts. Rose, born in 1887, was also a little person—a talented pianist and skilled cook who had made her own way through the circus circuit. Their wedding in Lowell that November was so anticipated that, according to their promotional materials, "many business houses as well as numerous factories closed their doors while the ceremony lasted."

Building a palace, piece by piece

By 1913, the newly minted Count and Countess had saved enough to leave the nomadic circus life behind. They moved to Montreal and opened their first attraction at 415 Rachel Est (now 507a)—a modest operation that served as both home and tourist destination.

But Philippe had bigger dreams. He initially pitched the city on building an elaborate attraction in Parc Lafontaine—an entire miniature village where little people could live and work, producing scaled-down goods for others like them around the world. The city's executive committee rejected the proposal, but Philippe didn't abandon the vision. Instead, he channeled that ambition into something more intimate and, ultimately, more revolutionary.

In 1926, the same year their son Philippe Jr. was born, the family moved into their custom-built palace at 961 Rachel Est. From the outside, it looked like any other Plateau triplex. But once you crossed the threshold guarded by those two stone lions, and you entered an entirely different world.

Inside the domestic theatre

The entrance hall was the only space with normal ceiling height—a calculated choice that let visitors absorb the full scope of what they were about to experience. Everything beyond that was scaled down: the stairway, the furniture, the kitchen appliances, even Rose's piano. Philippe had commissioned local craftsmen to build miniature versions of bourgeois furnishings.

Open from 9 AM to 11 PM daily, the Palace operated on a simple but effective premise: for a dime, tourists could watch the Nicol family go about their daily lives. Rose would play piano in the parlour. Philippe would read his newspaper in a chair perfectly sized for him. Their infant son Philippe Jr., dubbed "the Little Prince of the Plateau", would crawl around furniture that fit him perfectly.

The Nicols moved freely through their space, acknowledging visitors, chatting with them, even posing for photographs. The family had turned their home into Montreal's most popular tourist attraction—mentioned alongside Notre-Dame Basilica and the wax museum in promotional materials, recommended by taxi drivers to their fares.

The genius of the setup was how it reversed the usual power dynamics. Visitors found themselves oversized, awkward, unable to use any of the furniture or fixtures. They had to kneel to see themselves in the mirrors. The space literally made them feel disabled while the Nicols moved with complete ease and authority in their own domain.

"In this miniature world, we, the giants, feel ill at ease, a little incapacitated," wrote reporter André Viau decades later. "For example, one must fall to one's knees to look at oneself in the mirror. And everything seems so fragile: should one sit in a chair it would surely be crushed."

A prince gone rogue

The Nicol family's carefully crafted royal narrative began to crack in the 1940s. Philippe Sr. died suddenly in 1940 at age 58, leaving Rose to manage both the business and their increasingly troubled son.

Philippe Jr. had grown up as a literal tourist attraction—the "only viable child ever born to two little person parents," according to the family's promotional brochures. Whether it was the pressure of living constantly on display or simply youthful rebellion, Philippe Jr. began acting out in spectacular fashion.

In 1947, he was arrested for breaking into a neighbouring shop to steal electrical tools. In 1951, he made headlines again for attempting to rob a tobacco store on Mount Royal Avenue and a taxi driver—using a toy gun. The irony wasn't lost on anyone: the "Prince of the Midgets" had become a small-time criminal using fake weapons.

After serving more than two years in prison, Philippe Jr. fled to the United States, where he found work as a professional wrestler. It was one of the few careers available to little people at the time, though it echoed the same exploitation dynamics his parents had tried to escape.

Rose continued operating the Palace alone, but the magic was fading. The family story that had once charmed tourists now carried undertones of tragedy.

The end of an era

When Rose died in 1964, the Palace's original era ended with her. In 1972, Huguette Rioux-Bastien, also a little person, bought the property and tried to transform it into something more educational by opening a "doll hospital" in the space, repairing toys while giving tours of the preserved Nicol apartments. Rioux-Bastien, who later founded the Little People's Association of Canada, described the Palace as "a fairy tale and a theatre stage where the illusion of having a normal height was prevalent."

But the cultural moment had passed. By the 1970s and 80s, what had once seemed like harmless entertainment increasingly felt exploitative. Medical understanding of dwarfism had advanced, changing public perception from curiosity to sympathy. The novelty that had sustained the Palace for decades now seemed dated, perhaps even cruel to some.

In 1992, exactly 79 years after Philippe and Rose first opened their doors on Rachel Street, the Palace closed permanently. Philippe Jr. died that same year on April 6, reportedly penniless.

The building changed hands again. The miniature furniture was dispersed—some pieces sold at antique auctions in Maine, the custom grandfather clock eventually finding its way to the Canadian Clock Museum.

What remains

Today, if you walk down Rachel East toward Parc Lafontaine, you'll find no trace of Montreal's once-famous palace. The building has been renovated beyond recognition. The attraction that once drew visitors from around the world exists now only in archives and memories that recall a Montreal that was stranger, more permissive of spectacle, and perhaps more willing to let people control their own narratives—even when those narratives involved charging admission to watch them live their lives.

Philippe and Rose Nicol had been born into a world that saw them as curiosities, as problems to be hidden away or displayed for others' amusement. Instead, they built something on their own terms with a space where they held all the power, where visitors came to them, where the architectural environment itself challenged assumptions about whose bodies were "normal" and whose were not.

The Palace was many things: a tourist trap, a business venture, a family home, a piece of performance art, a challenge to social norms. It was Philippe and Rose's way of saying that if people were going to stare anyway, they might as well profit from it—and maybe, in the process, make those people question what they thought they were looking at.

It was chance to see the world from a completely different perspective, even if you had to get down on your knees to do it.