Triplex, three-flat, triple decker... TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : SUMMER EVENING ON BERNARD STREET MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : CHINATOWN ST-JEAN BAPTISTE FESTIVAL MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : BARBECUE IN THE BACK ALLEY, MILE END MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : ST-JEAN BAPTISTE DAY CELEBRATION MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : AT THE PLACE-DES-ARTS FOUNTAIN MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : KABYLIEN FESTIVAL, ST-JEAN BAPTISTE DAY MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : IMPROMPTU PARADE ON ST-VIATEUR MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : BOY IN CHINATOWN MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : ST-JEAN BAPTISTE DAY CELEBRATION MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : ON DE LA GAUCHETIÈRE STREET MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : WOMAN IN CHINATOWN MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : OLD MEN ON CLARK STREET MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : EVENING ON ST-VIATEUR STREET MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : LITTLE GIRL AT CHINATOWN FESTIVAL MONTREAL, 24.06.04 : ON THE FRONT STEPS, ST-URBAIN STREET New Urbanism swept Canada and the United States in the 1990s, advocating a return to the traditional ways of building cities. Out with the suburban snout house and in with the rowhouse; bulldoze the strip malls and replace them with rows of shops with apartments above. At the same time, a housing boom rocked the continent, sending land values soaring and condo towers shooting into the sky. Housing shortages are now prevalent, hurting the most disadvantaged members of society. In Toronto, which receives more immigrants per capita than any other city in North America, many new arrivals are sequestered in decrepit pockets of highrise apartments in the suburbs. What's a good way to provide more housing while building dense and sustainable neighbourhoods? Bring back the triplex! Triplexes (click here for a photo) are as much a symbol of Montreal as woodframe Victorians are to San Francisco. The three-storey stone buildings with whimsical wrought-iron staircases dominate large swaths of the city, providing shelter for thousands and fodder for many a postcard photographer. One triplex can have as many as six apartments, but most simply have one per floor. Each apartment has its own door on the street (hence the outdoor staircases) and upper-floor apartments have one or two balconies, while ground-level tenants enjoy a small garden in the front or back. The benefits of the triplex are enormous. Its moderate height frames the street without being too short or too overbearing, while balconies and outdoor staircases provide a connection with the outside world, keeping eyes on the street around the clock. Triplexes provide more than enough density for vibrant commercial streets and pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods, too. Montreal's first triplexes were built in the late 19th century, just as hundreds of thousands of migrants from rural Quebec and immigrants from Eastern Europe began pouring into the city. It was between 1890 and 1910 that the great triplex neighbourhoods were built: Mile End and Rosemont, the Plateau and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Verdun and Villeray. The great triplex boom was by no means limited to Montreal, either. Thousands of triple deckers sprung up across New England, housing immigrant workers in Boston and Providence. Three-flats emerged in parts of New York and Chicago, too. A few weeks ago, when I spoke with Susan Bronson, architect at the Université de Montréal and Mile End historian, she half-jokingly observed that the triplexes on her street usually had one generation per floor: an old grandmother, the original immigrant, on the bottom, her children on the middle and the grandkids on the top. Most often, when the grandma died, the kids would sell the triplex and move to the suburbs or to another neighbourhood. Such is the history of Mile End: one immigrant group moves in around the same time another one is leaving. The new immigrants become tenants and then landlords when the original immigrants sell their building. The triplex provides both a home and a much-needed source of income, a pattern that propelled Mile End through waves of Jewish, Greek and Portuguese immigration. The 1930s and 40s saw a gradual switch from triplexes to suburban houses and apartment buildings. Today, when a triplex is sold, it's usually bought by a condo developer who renovates it and sells of each unit individually. Neighbourhoods with lots of turn-of-the-century triplexes gentrify while new waves of immigrants settle in more modern neighbourhoods like Park Extension and Côte-des-Neiges, where housing consists of large apartment blocks. Unfortunately, many of these buildings are kept in disrepair by neglectful landlords who take advantage of immigrants' fear of contacting authorities or ignorance of their rights as tenants. Triplexes don't solve the problem of bad landlords, but they gives immigrants a chance to gain a foothold and put down roots in their new home. ――― Do you like Urbanphoto? Enough to spare us a few dollars to help us get by? I'm now accepting donations via PayPal. Currently, all of Urbanphoto's expenses come out of my own pocket, so any and all help will be very much appreciated! Feel free to donate whatever you feel is appropriate. Meanwhile, in other news: Shannon Medlock offers another dispatch from South America. He has taken yet another trip from his home base of Buenos Aires and is now reporting from Brazil, where he was impressed with Porto Alegre and will soon head to São Paulo. You should also check out the Montreal City blog, where Kate has been posting some fascinating then-and-now photos of Montreal street scenes. Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for last month's posts Summer slothfulness WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2004 - CHRISTOPHER DEWOLF MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : IN THE CARRÉ ST-LOUIS MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : ON THE CARTIER MONUMENT STEPS MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : IN THE CARRÉ ST-LOUIS MONTREAL, 12.06.04 : EVENING IN CHINATOWN MONTREAL, 03.06.04 : SUN LIFE BUILDING AND CATHEDRAL MONTREAL, 12.06.04 : STE-CATHERINE STREET AT PEEL MONTREAL, 16.06.04 : MAN WITH DOG ON SHERBROOKE STREET MONTREAL, 12.06.04 : EVENING IN CHINATOWN MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : IN THE CARRÉ ST-LOUIS MONTREAL, 18.06.04 : PORTUGUESE COOK ON ST-LAURENT MONTREAL, 20.06.04 : TELEPHONE CALL, MAISONNEUVE STREET MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : IN THE CARRÉ ST-LOUIS MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : WORKING IN JEANNE-MANCE PARK MONTREAL, 23.06.04 : CHECKING OUT FRUIT AT HARJI'S Full disclosure: I'm lazy. Well, maybe not lazy, but definitely a procrastinator. I've taken hundreds of photos over the past couple of months but haven't bothered to update Urbanphoto along with them. If you miss the delicate rhythm of my charming and elegant prose, though, you can always catch me at Maisonneuve magazine's The Urban Eye. Coming up this Friday will be a column on taking back Canada's streets from the evil automobile. Meanwhile, however, I figure I'll share a few interesting bits and pieces from our discussion forum. Shannon Medlock, who has contributed a couple of articles to Urbanphoto, is now living in Buenos Aires and promises to correspond regularly with dispatches on porteno life. But first, he offers us a brief glimpse of Santiago: Santiago resides in a splendid natural environment of snow-capped mountains encapsulating a verdant green valley of eternal spring. The valley itself is a microcosm of the geographical diversity that is Chile, consisting of flat land interspersed with sharply rising hills, small lakers, shallow rivers and a sylvan paradise of trees and plants. This is in great contrast to the blunt grasslands interrupted by big, sloggish rivers that Buenos Aires calls home. But somehow cities that seem to have the most beautiful natural environments make the absolute worst of their physical environments, with Los Angeles and Mexico City especially coming to mind. Erstwhile editor Chris Szabla posts a couple of articles by Joel Kotkin, who argues that cities do more harm than good by embracing Richard Florida's notion of the creative city. His essays elicit a lively response from one member: a certain breed of columnist cries cassandra songs every time there's an instance of change. it's a rush to secure history in one's shaky perception, the bragging rights of the dead. my city of montreal is peripheral to his argument, but it is an exemplary encapsulation of where and why he is wrong. his thesis seems to essentially be that, its position as gate-keeper of the saint lawrence and robber baron of canada gone, the thin gloss of civility the place has managed to retain is but a weak bulwark against irrelevance. the latter quality being, apparently, best measured in tonnes of pig iron. Read more at the Café l'Urbanité. Discuss this post on our discussion forum Head over to the archives for last month's posts