One-Storey Houses

Montreal developed as a geographically disparate patchwork of independent municipalities. Many of these old towns and suburbs were long ago absorbed into the city, but traces of their past character can still be seen in their streets.

Last week, Guillaume St-Jean wrote on Spacing Montreal about three one-storey buildings in Villeray that will be demolished for condos. Clad in brick, these kinds of flat-roofed brick houses were built mostly in the 1910s and 1920s in the neighbourhoods north of the CPR tracks, like Little Italy, Park Ex, Villeray and Youville (an old village in what is now northern Villeray and southern Ahuntsic). I’ve always found them funny because they look like triplexes missing their top floors.

In the east end, it’s not unusual to find another type of one-storey building: old woodframe cottages, many of them set well back from the street in contrast to the plexes that surround them. That’s the case on Joliette Street in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where I spotted the two houses above. According to the city’s property bank, the green house was built in 1910. You wouldn’t know it from the vinyl siding.

I’m curious to know who built these houses and why. Were they too poor to invest in a full-fledged duplex or triplex, which were far more lucrative? Did they simply predate the mass development of plexes?

Vancouver Decorates Its Sidewalks

Don’t talk to my friend Sam about sidewalk decoration. He’ll snort and expound upon the many ways in which it’s useless. I take a more sympathetic position towards it: I think it enhances the pedestrian experiences, especially if the decoration combines aesthetic or artistic value with practical or historical information. At its best, it creates a sense of place and yet another interesting detail in the urban fabric.

On many downtown Vancouver sidewalks, the shape of leaves have been stamped into the pavement beneath a street tree. There’s something playful and childlike about them; I find it hard to imagine roughneck construction workers actually taking a moment to draw fallen leaves in the wet concrete they just poured. I especially like the fact that a variety of leaves are represented.

Elsewhere around town, twelve mosaics created of Vancouver scenes by local artists have been installed in the sidewalk as part of an Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association initiative. Some of the mosaic images are a bit cliché — no doubt the BIA had a hand in picking the themes — but some are nice homages to overlooked bits of Vancouver heritage, like a collage of Vancouver’s most notable architectural features and a jumble of famous neon signs.

Two more features that caught my eye in Vancouver: in Chinatown, the Chinese versions of the neighbourhood’s street names have been inscribed in gold-plated characters on the sidewalk and on the base of lampposts.

On busy streets like Burrard, the word “LOOK” has been stencilled into the pavement to prevent pedestrians from stepping into curbside traffic. With its green backdrop and owl eyes, it’s far more eye-catching than the “Look Right” signs found throughout London and Hong Kong.

Summer Nights In Shadowy Streets

Vancouver Furnishes Its Sidewalks

Downtown Vancouver has an abundance of high-quality new street furniture, thanks in large part to a proactive planning department that gives developers density bonuses in exchange for public amenities. So far, developers have paid for countless water features, a good number of parks, social housing, a permanent home for the Vancouver International Film Festival and even a new elementary school. But they have also shelled out for some small but important pieces of street furniture. Montreal could learn a few lessons.

The strange-looking bike rack above is a nice example. I found it on Davie Street near the corner of Seymour, just outside a large new condo complex. It is both attractive and functional, which is something that cannot be said for the woefully misguided bicycle rack design that is the standard across Montreal.

Like Montreal, Vancouver does not maintain street recycling bins. Unlike Montreal, though, it has come up with an ingeniously simple way to make sure that bottles and cans are recycled nonetheless. Many garbage cans in the city feature a “recycling rack” with room for five containers; put your bottle there and, soon enough, someone will take it to the bottle depot to cash its deposit. Vancouver has a virtual army of men and women who scour garbage cans for anything with a deposit value so these recycling racks are never full for long.

Many newly-developed residential areas in downtown Vancouver include superbly-designed parks and plazas. One of these, George Wayburn Park, includes a row of permanent metal sunchairs that face False Creek and the afternoon sun. It’s a nice touch that adds a bit of playfulness to its surroundings.

There are few legal spaces for postering in Montreal. You can stick a poster onto any construction hoarding, but these are monopolized by an advertising company called Publicité sauvage. There are also a handful of poster boards in the Quartier des spectacles and outlying boroughs like Lachine. In the most heavily trafficked places in town — exactly where legal postering space is needed the most — people are forced to glue their posters illegally to mailboxes, lampposts and other surfaces.

Vancouver is far more accommodating: hundreds of lampposts around the city have been fitted with casts to which anyone can stick a poster. City workers clear them every Tuesday.

A Ghost Appears, But Not For Long

In a city with as many layers of history as Montreal, the demolition of a building usually entails the relevation of something else, like a ghost ad. I’ve written before about these old painted advertisements faded by time and the elements; they can be found in cities and towns right across North America and Europe, where the practice of painting advertisements on building sides was long ago usurped by billboards and other media. No matter how many I find in Montreal, though, there are always more lurking in tight corners, dark alleyways and, of course, behind brick walls.

Not too long ago I was walking down St. Denis Street when I noticed that the old building that housed L’Barouf had been completely demolished. (It caught fire in July and was badly damanged.) Behind the construction hoardings that separated its rubble from the street, I spotted the remnants of an old wall sign, mostly obscured by soot and debris. It’s pretty much illegible but a nice discovery nonetheless, just like the much more intact Lea & Perrins ad that was uncovered by another demolition on the Main. The owner of L’Barouf has vowed to rebuild as soon as possible, which means it won’t be long before this ad is hidden once again.

The old Coca-Cola ad on Ontario Street in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, near the corner of Valois, was never obscured by a building. In fact, judging by its use of Helvetica and the slogan “Coke, le vrai de vrai,” I would guess it was painted as recently as the early 1970s. (“Le vrai de vrai” is probably a translation of Coke’s 1969 slogan “It’s the real thing.”) Until recently, the ad loomed over a autobody shop, but the garage has been demolished and will soon be replaced by the Cours Valois, a three-storey apartment building. Like so many other painted wall advertisements in Montreal, this ghostly Coke ad will soon be entombed behind a brick wall.

In the end, though, that might actually be a good thing: there’s no better way to preserve a ghost ad than to protect it from sunlight, the rain and fresh air. If and when, decades from now, the Cours Valois is demolished, Montrealers will once again have another window into the past.

Mile End’s Country Hotel

Mile End once had its very own country inn. There was a Mile End hotel and tavern as early as 1815, when one of its regulars, an English businessman and landowner named Stanley Bagg, made a number of references to it in some ads he placed in the Gazette.

It’s likely that the hotel you see above is a descendant of that early inn. Built in 1850 at the corner of what is now St. Laurent and Bernard, I like to imagine that it was one of those out-of-town spots where you could hitch your horse, get a beer and find a room for a night. Whoever built it must have been awfully grateful in 1882 when, less than a block from the hotel, the CPR built Mile End Station. Over the next couple of years, every train heading west to the Prairies passed through Mile End.

I know very little about the history of the hotel in the twentieth century, although its ground floor remained a tavern. Alas, as happens all too often, this unassuming but historically remarkable building burned down sometime in the 1990s. The top photo you see was taken around 1985; the bottom one in 2007. It would be nice if a longtime Mile End resident could share some information about this building.

(Incidentally, does anyone know why the lot has remained vacant for so long?)

The before-and-after photo was created, as usual, by Guillaume St-Jean. I’m happy to say that Guillaume has joined Spacing Montreal as a contributor, so be sure to check it out for regular dispatches from Montreal’s past.

Five Minutes at Burrard and Robson

Robson and Burrard, Vancouver’s busiest corner

From Pixels Into Paint

Ste. Catherine Street, Montreal

Last June, a French artist named Franck Chambrun emailed me to say that he had created a number of paintings based on my Montreal and Hong Kong photos. I took a look at his work and, I have to say, I’m smitten, and it’s not just because he likes my photos.

Chambrun’s paintings of streetscapes are unique and eye-catching. Although they are essentially abstract — the city’s detail is reduced into layers of colour — they manage to convey the clutter, frenzy and humanity of urban life. The ostensible simplicity of his work belies a tremendous amount of depth and nuance.

To make many of his paintings, Chambrun projects a photo onto canvas and works from there. More of his work, including some interesting behind-the-scenes photos and commentary, can be found on his blog.

Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

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