The old mills, houses, school and other buildings dating from Robert Owen's time are preserved, and there is an exhibition centre in a former counting house.
In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.
At that time Bold Street had not become a shopping street but consisted of dwelling houses of well-to-do merchants, many of whom had their counting houses at the back.
The 18,000 sq. m of modern office suites will be in the former drawing offices on the first floor and the former counting house on the ground floor.
If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.
But the seaport district is mostly four-, five- and six-story counting houses and other mercantile buildings from the 19th century.
The big counting houses began moving from Old Montreal in the 1970's to new buildings in the newer sections of the city or, in many cases, to Toronto.
For some, the exercise was as satisfying as stacking the dimes and quarters of an allowance, as soothing as sitting in King Midas's gold-filled counting house.
He doesn't pay interest like the best counting houses, but he doesn't keep transaction ledgers for the taxmen, either.
Usually, his grandsire and the other herders drove their wagons to the small counting house in Iron Stem operated by the Council in the spring and summer.
