My hunt for apartment building names has only just begun, but these two photos show exactly why I’m interested in them in the first place. Appartement Nathalie is located on St. Denis near Rachel, right in the middle of the Plateau Mont-Royal. The Denbigh, meanwhile, can be found about five kilometres to the west, at the corner of de Maisonneuve and Elm in Westmount.
Both were built around the same time in the late nineteenth century. Without being too obvious, their names speak a lot to Montreal’s cultural and linguistic divide, between francophones and anglophones, French-Canadians and Anglo-Scots. But they also hint at trends that bridged that divide, like the increasing popularity of apartment buildings among Montreal’s upper middle-class, French and English alike, in the late 1800s.
What do you do with an abandoned building? Turn it into art. Such is the case in Liverpool where the British sculptor Richard Wilson has created Turning the Place Over, an ambitious intervention that removes an eight metre chunk of façade from a building in central Liverpool, rotates it and puts it back into place. An introduction to the piece by the Cass Sculpture Foundation describes it in more detail:
Turning the Place Over consists of an 8 metres diameter ovoid cut from the façade of a building and made to oscillate in three dimensions. The revolving façade rests on a specially designed giant rotator, usually used in the shipping and nuclear industries, and acts as a huge opening and closing ‘window’, offering recurrent glimpses of the interior during its constant cycle during daylight hours.
The ovoid section of facade is then mounted on a central spindle, aligned on a specific angle to the building. When at rest, the ovoid section of facade would fit flush into the rest of the building. The angled spindle is, however, placed on a set of powerful motorised industrial rollers and will rotate. As it rotates, the facade not only becomes completely inverted, but will also oscillate into the building and out into the street, revealing the interior of the building and only being flush with the building at one point during its rotation.
This astonishing feat of engineering will stun audiences on many levels. Disturbing and disorientating from a distance, from close-up passers-by have a thrilling experience as the building rotates above them.
Some observers have noted that Wilson’s intervention draws heavily from the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, an American architect and artist who carved up houses with a chainsaw in the 1970s. His work dwelled on the disintegration of the United States’ public life, including the decay of its cities; one of his more well-known efforts, very similar to Turning the Place Over, involved cutting out a large piece of wall from a New York warehouse and suspending it from a crane.
It’s not entirely clear what Wilson’s installation, which was commissioned by Liverpool in celebration of its designation as 2008’s European Capital of Culture, is trying to say. But it’s still remarkable, if only because it merges the public and private spheres of life into one, revealing the inner workings of a building that is normally shielded from passersby.
The video screen of a silhouetted stripper was once a landmark at the corner of Ste. Catherine and the Main. It was a symbol of sorts for Montreal’s rapidly-dwindling red light district, a seedy neighbourhood of cheap bars, diners, peep shows juxtaposed with music venues, theatres and university buildings. It was about the only remarkable thing left on the building it occupied, a hideous, dilapidated, mostly-abandoned structure that was an eyesore even for a scuzzy part of town.
It’s a bit of a surprise to look at the above photos, compiled by Spacing Montreal’s Guillaume St-Jean, only to realize that that ugly building is in fact quite old. When it was built around the turn of the twentieth century, it was solid and elegant, if somewhat unremarkable. Over the course of a century it was brutalized to such an extent as to be all but unrecognizable, save for its distinctively narrow width.
Sometime next year, the building will make way for a landmark that represents a different kind of Montreal. The municipal government has expropriated the two properties at the corner of Ste. Catherine and the Main for a new cultural centre that will be called the Red Light. The name is an awfully cynical appropriation of the area’s often rough-and-tumble history (and I’m sure some might take offence at the way it glorifies the sex trade), but the building itself doesn’t seem too bad. That is, if we can get a clear idea of how it will turn out, because the renderings that have been released are not exactly detailed.
The Red Light will anchor the new Quartier des spectacles, an attempt to reinforce the arts-driven character of the east end of downtown. Last month, $120 million worth of public space improvements were announced, including the creation of new plazas and squares and the part-time pedestrianization of Ste. Catherine St. There’s plenty of things to be wary about in this plan, but as far as the Red Light is concerned, I can think of worse things to build at one of Montreal’s more infamous intersections.
It would hardly be an original observation to point out that a simple set of steps can become a well-used hangout. One of the world’s most famous public spaces is, after all, known as the Spanish Steps. But for all their ubiquity, only some steps become popular places to sit. What makes some gathering places and others just passages to somewhere else?
There are at least three key elements to making a successful set of hangout steps. The first is openness: no matter how wide they actually are, the steps must feel and appear accessible. People should feel comfortable sitting on them, which won’t happen if they’re getting in the way of passersby. The second element is location: the steps need to be located in a high-traffic area where people would actually want to sit down. Finally, the steps must have a view: there’s no point in sitting somewhere if there’s nothing to look at.
The steps in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery are one of Vancouver’s favourite gathering spaces precisely because they fill all of these criteria. They don’t actually lead anywhere — the entrance at the top of the steps has been sealed off — so they serve no purpose other than as seats in an urban amphitheatre. Similar are the steps at Montreal’s Place des Arts. Their panorama view of busy Ste. Catherine St. and the city beyond attracts a lot of people, but they’re broad enough that sitting on them doesn’t impede access to the second-storey plaza to which they lead.
In London, the steps around the statue of “Eros” (actually the “Angel of Christian Charity”) in Picadilly Circus and the sundial at the Seven Dials are popular gathering spots (even if, in the last case, there are only two steps on which to sit). Quite possibly my favourite set of steps, however, are those in front of the Arts Building at McGill University, from which the entire city seems to unfold.
McGill University’s “Arts steps” in downtown Montreal
As a resident of Sud-Ouest — right where Griffintown, Little Burgundy and Point St-Charles intersect, actually — I was surprised by the scope and scale of the Village Griffintown project announced yesterday for a long-neglected neighbourhood in southwestern Montreal. It’s not at all what we were expecting, and while we welcome redevelopment, and the proposed design has many positive attributes, not least of which is its ability to slow or stop urban sprawl, my neighbours and I have some unanswered questions.
1. Why the megablocks?
The design currently imposes some superblocks onto existing streets, blocking Shannon and Young. The plan view can be misleading, seeming to show through streets in the two large residential-commercial buildings, but these are actually sky terraces for the tower dwellers. Surely the same amount of space could be incorporated with more, smaller buildings, on more intimately scaled streets, and preserving the historic street grid?
2. Why go with Le Corbusier-styled ‘Towers in the park?’
Good retail urban design involves building right to the sidewalk, and lining the streets with shops, windows and displays. The current “superblock” design would seem to impose a lot of blank walls on side streets, and further separates the buildings from the streets with berms and plazas. The same seems to go for some of the smaller apartment buildings to be built canalside - creating isolated, “Habitations Jeanne Mance” dead zones, instead of lively / leafy / intimate streets. The city of Portland in fact discourages new commercial buildings without providing for “living streets” in this fashion, and it’s something we should look at here.
3. Why this ‘campus style’ unified design?
It may seem picayune to quibble about the aesthetics of the project, but viewed as an ensemble, it resembles a university satellite campus or a superhospital, rather than anything village-like. What we actually have here is not that different than the Terrasses Windsor — inexpensive modern boxes clad in different-coloured brick to make them seem more detailed than they actually are. Looking at Place D’Armes and other historical ensembles that evolved organically over time — where you can see three eras of architecture in the Bank of Montreal alone — how difficult would it be to design an ensemble of buildings that all looked different, yet historically appropriate to the neighborhood - red sandstone, limestone, granite, red and yellow brick, mixing historic styles from 1850s to postmodern — something that’ll age a bit better than the current design?
4. Why the secrecy?
Why was this project developed behind closed doors for so long? According to the Sud-Ouest borough mayors’ office there will be public consultations in either December or January, and a decision has to be made by April…a bit rushed for something so important, no?
5. Why the car-centric development when we’re coming to the end of the oil era?
I applaud the fact that they’re planning to make the development transit-centric, and incorporate the proposed tram line — but the economic reasoning for the large-surface retail outlets (and a 2000-seat theatre, and hotels) depends on a good deal of car traffic. Geology and politics are against car-centric development — most oil geologists believe we have reached the peak of oil production right now, and we’re heading down a rather jagged slope towards depletion. Will this project survive 30, 50 years from now when few people, if any, will be driving?
6. What’s the energy and waste footprint of this ensemble?
Similarly to the car question, we wonder about the infrastructure and energy inputs that’ll be needed to support this development. There’ll need to be new sewer mains, electrical substations, etc. Large-surface retail needs a lot of energy to heat and cool. The flat roofs will create urban heat islands. Could the project use passive and active solar, rooftop or roof-edge wind turbines, or even geothermal loops? Will serious attempts be made to ban waste (disposable cups, excess packaging) and encourage recycling and composting on-site?
7. Will there be space for smaller and local non-chain retail?
As Kate from the Montreal City Weblog notes, “I think what makes me saddest about this kind of megadevelopment, even more than the knowledge that it brings more suburban values right into the heart of town, is that such developments are relentlessly corporate. Where’s the space for the used bookshop, the neighbourhood café, the ethnic chicken rotisserie?”
I would add to that list: space for urban gardening / farming, local produce markets, community space, schools, daycares, clinics, soccer fields, indoor recreation, art galleries, and maybe some decent, non-chain pubs and places to play live music?
Furthering on from points 5 and 6, and touching on all the other points, the more self-sustaining the complex is, the better. In an energy-scarce future, even maintaining buildings of this scope and size is going to be a real challenge. Not impossible, but the developers and promoters need to show us that they’re taking this into account.
Way back in 1843, Montreal, population 50,000, was big enough to have six whole suburbs to its name. On the west, there was the Recollet Suburb, St. Ann’s Suburb, St. Joseph’s Suburb and the St. Antoine Suburb. On the north, the St. Lawrence Suburb followed the path of St. Lawrence Street, already the city’s main north-south axis. To the east, finally, was the Quebec Suburb, strung along St. Mary Street, the eastern extension of Notre Dame and the main road down river to Quebec City.
Traces of these old extra-muros neighbourhoods are still visible — to an extent. In the early 1970s, nearly all of the Faubourg Québec, commonly known as the Faubourg à m’lasse, thanks to the pervasive odour of molasses from one of its sugar refineries, was demolished for the Maison Radio-Canada, a vast complex home to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Around the same time, most of the rest of it was razed for the east end of the Ville-Marie Expressway. Since the late 1990s, what was left has been redeveloped as a residential area known, naturally enough, as the Faubourg Québec. Wholly uninspired in its architecture and design, one of the only remarkable aspects is a reconstructed viaduct and a small plaza that retraces the old rail line that once ran through the area.
Now, a large part of the old Quebec Suburb is set to be transformed into a high-density, mixed-used neighbourhood centered around the old Viger Station, the Canadian Pacific Railway’s first railroad station/hotel combo. Nearby, the giant CHUM hospital complex is set to be built on the remains of the old neighbourhood that emerged on lower St. Denis after a fire devastated most of the Quebec and St. Lawrence suburbs in 1852. Among the buildings slated to be demolished is the St. Sauveur Church, one of the first buildings to emerge after the fire.
Across town, meanwhile, in the remains of the old St. Ann’s Suburb, better known as Griffintown, the stage is being set for an even more massive redevelopment. Today, details were announced for a $1.3 billion retail, residential, office and entertainment district that will contain at least 3,800 housing units, a theatre, a cinema, office space, two hotels, plenty of retail, a tramway connection to downtown, new parks and plenty of parking.
This area was already decimated in the 1960s and 70s, when much of its old industry and housing stock was demolished, as well as St. Ann’s Church, the focus of its large Irish community, so this redevelopment is almost working with a blank slate. At least it will respect the area’s existing street pattern and incorporate many of its surviving historic structures. It looks like, in both east and west, Montreal’s first suburbs are being remade once again — hopefully this time with a bit more sensitivity than before.
Earlier this year on Spacing Montreal, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff wrote about “ghost buildings,” the traces of long-gone buildings visible on the surface of blank walls. I wasn’t a surprised when I spotted a few ghost buildings while wandering around downtown Boston on Saturday. Unlike ghost ads, whose raisons d’être are usually pretty obvious, ghost buildings are surrounded by mystery. What did they look like? When were they demolished? Why?
Faubourg des Récollets
Griffintown
Cité du multimedia de Montréal
Darling Brothers Foundry
Date: 1889, recycled in 2002
Address: 735, rue Ottawa
Architects: J.R. Gardiner, recycled by Atelier In Situ
Materials: brick, concrete, glass and rust
This building is the Quartier Éphémère’s (www.quartierephemere.org) multidisciplinary arts/culture space and the Cluny Art Bar.
Once woodland to the west of Old Montréal at the base of the hill leading to Montréal’s modern city centre, the Faubourg des Récollets has evolved several times over its history. The western gate of Old Montréal was in fact the Porte des Récollets located at Notre-Dame and McGill streets. Griffintown, was located south of des Récollets between rue William and the canal. The lower lying Griffintown often flooded before the construction of the Canal Lachine (1821-1825). During Montréal’s industrial revolution in the second half of the 19th century, the mainly Irish residents of Griffintown moved out of the sector as it was taken over by manufacturing and warehouses in proximity to the new Canal.
Up until the 1930’s Depression, the Faubouge des Récollets – Griffintown was the site of many manufacturers, foundries, warehouses, wholesalers, retailers and a few residents. From the Depression on, the area began its decline. In 1933, CN constructed the elevated railway link into the new Central Station (1938-1943). This ‘split’ the Faubourg des Récollets (east) from Griffintown (west). After the St-Lawrence seaway opened in 1950, the Canal Lachine slowly declined to finally close in 1968. The canal reopened for recreational use in 2002. Another contributor to ongoing decline of the area was the addition of the Autoroute Bonaventure in 1965 and later the Autoroute Ville-Marie to the north.
Since the mid-nineties, Montréal’s southern gate has experienced a renaissance starting with the dot-com boom resulting in the conversion of many of the old industrial spaces into lofts, studios and offices for high-tech companies. The Ville de Montréal created the Cité du multimédia (www.citemultimedia.com) in 1998 to encourage the regeneration of the neighbourhood where new buildings were also added to attract more information technology and multimedia firms.
This summer, while wandering through one of the sidestreets between Prince Arthur and Sherbrooke, I veered off into a laneway. Expecting to find some interesting graffiti, a picturesque clothesline or maybe some discarded furniture, I was surprised to come across an entire triplex at the intersection of two alleyways. It appeared to be abandoned — windows boarded up, balconies rotting — despite its prime location.
Montreal has a long tradition of laneway housing. In many of its neighbourhoods, especially those built before the 1920s, you’ll find old houses, duplexes and even the occasional triplex in back alleys. I don’t know how they ended up there — property owners trying to squeeze more money out of their land, probably — but they add to the laneway’s sense of being a sort of secret, parallel city, where things are quieter, more intimate and a bit more mysterious. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in a laneway.
So why we building any new laneway houses? In Toronto, many architects and urban designers have embraced laneway housing as a form of incremental densification, a way to add more people to existing neighbourhoods without seriously disrupting their atmosphere or urban form. Although the city has so far refused to legalize new laneway housing, it does make case-by-case exceptions to its zoning laws, which has opened the way for some intriguing bits of domestic architecture.
Laneway houses don’t have to be newly-built; they can capitalize on existing garages and sheds. Wander through the laneways of Montreal and you’ll see an endless variety of them, many with second floors. It would be so easy to convert them into tiny but innovatively-designed apartments and houses, infusing our neighbourhoods with a cheap and flexible form of housing. But nobody’s talking about it. Unlike Toronto, Montrealers haven’t had a public discussion about laneway housing. Why not?
From the 1940s to the 1980s, vast areas of North American cities were demolished and replaced with freeways and large concrete skyscrapers. This process, which came to be known as Urban Renewal, did not hit Quebec City quite as hard as Montreal or other cities in Canada. Though the old city was left untouched, over 1,200 homes were demolished to widen boulevards and make way for skyscrapers in historic neighbourhoods immediately outside the city walls. In 1974 alone, four of the city’s ten tallest skyscrapers were inaugurated. One of these was topped with a revolving restaurant on the 31st floor.
The restaurant in question, L’Astral, tops the Loews le Concorde hotel. The Italianate home of Cyrille Duquet, little-known inventor of the double-ended telephone handset, once stood on the site of this hotel. Promotional literature of the time claimed Le Concorde provided the “sophistication of the vieux regime with a bold contemporary statement.” Though it’s difficult to see the link between a mass of brutalist concrete and the traditions of New France, there’s no doubt that the building was bold.
I went to this rotating restaurant for the first time a few weeks ago. The whole idea of lunching at L’Astral had always seemed a bit corny. A few work colleagues managed to talk me into it with promises of nice views. To be fair, it was better than other tourist traps on the same strip, and it got me mind thinking about revolving restaurants.
When it opened at the end of April, 2005, the Grande Bibliothèque defied expectations when it attracted tens of thousands of people who were eager to check out its airy architecture and multimedia, multilingual collection. The crowds never let up: even today, two and a half years later, a visit to the library reveals an always-crowded place enjoyed by a large cross-section of Montreal’s population. It is, quite clearly, Montreal’s most important public building of the past three decades.
There’s just one problem: shortly after it opened, big chunks of the green-glass cladding popped out and fell onto the street below. Temporary safety barriers were erected while the library, city, borough and province all squabbled over how best to deal with the situation. Now, finally, a permanent plan has emerged: decorative planters, fences and awnings will be built around the library to protect pedestrians should any more pieces of glass fall. The work will start next spring and finish by July.
Without any renderings, I can’t say what effect this will have on the library’s architecture. It will at least be improvement over the status quo. But what I’m curious about is whether or not this will finally enable the library to deal with its western flank facing Savoie Avenue, a small laneway in between Berri and St. Denis. When it was built, you see, the library was conceived as being open to all of its surroundings. This building has no back end: there are entrances on all four sides of the building.
Savoie was given a particularly special treatment. Along with a nice entrance bearing the inscription “Vous êtes ici,” the library faces this alley with a succession of shallow retail spaces. According to promotional material during the library’s construction, these spaces were originally intended to be leased to vendors to create a book market along Savoie. Last spring, the city renovated the alley, installing attractive concrete paving stones and new lampposts, possibly in anticipation of the market.
With the falling-glass problem, that plan was shelved, but now that an awning will be build along this side of the library, I don’t see any reason why it can’t be put into action. Let’s hope that, by next summer, the Grande Bibliothèque will finally be able to live up to its full potential.
Montreal has lost one of its more remarkable pieces of kitsch architecture: today, the Canada Motel, a 47-year-old landmark on Taschereau Blvd. on the South Shore, closed its doors for good.
The motel, topped by a giant neon sign, is designed in the style of a typical Quebec farmhouse, and it’s surrounded by old habitant-style cottages containing rooms with themes like “lumberjack” and “garage.” Roxanne Arsenault, an UQÀM student who is writing her master’s thesis on kitsch architecture, has launched a petition to have Longueuil designate the building as an historic structure. She has been joined in her fight by Heritage Montreal and even La Presse offered its support: “Sauvons le motel Canada!” cried a recent headline.
Montreal has a wealth of kitschy commercial architecture from the 1950s and 60s, but much of it is in danger. Few of these kétaine buildings are protected from demolition, including many motels, old fast-food restaurants, advertising structures like the Guaranteed Milk Bottle and even well-known landmarks like the Orange Julep on Decarie. Ben’s, an example of kitsch par excellence, will soon be demolished — or, at best, gutted — for a new condo or office tower.
Last August, Radio-Canada ran a documentary on Montreal’s kitsch architecture and the efforts being made to save it. Roxanne Arsenault makes an appearance, and she counts the Jardin Tiki, a Chinese restaurant on Sherbrooke St. near the Olympic Village, among Montreal’s most endangered kitsch buildings. Other important ones include the Orange Julep and nearby Ruby Foo’s, a Chinese-themed motel and buffet built in the 1960s, when Decarie north of Queen Mary was a popular cruising strip.
Growing up in Calgary, where one of the city’s most enduring icons — the Calgary Tower, an orangey-red observation tower built in 1967 — is a brilliant example of kitsch, I can definitely understand the fascination with and desire to save these buildings. But preserving them is more complicated than it might seem. Unlike other styles of architecture, their appeal rests as much in their spirit as their appearance. Ben’s, without its formica tables, linoleum floor and Poet’s Corner, is little more than a minor example of streamline architecture. The Orange Julep can only function as a fast-food restaurant.
But there are good models of kitsch preservation, like Wildwood, a New Jersey beach town that was a favourite vacation spot for Quebeckers in the 1960s. Blessed with a large collection of motels (including the Quebec Motel and the Montreal Inn) designed in a style known in the United States as “doo wop architecture,” preservation activists in Wildwood have taken to saving old signs, furniture, even toilets. New Jersey has given heritage status to a number of motels, which has released federal preservation dollars. Wildwood business owners have even discovered that kitsch is good for business, as tourists return to Wildwood not only for the beach, but for its retro atmosphere.
Montreal might be well-suited to capitalize on a similar trend. In a review of the city’s kitsch architecture in Canadian Architect magazine, Elsa Lam detected an undercurrent of kitsch in everything from early twentieth-century triplexes to new structures like the multicoloured Palais des congrès.
It was a dull, overcast day when I decided to take the SkyTrain a few extra stops east to Joyce Station, in the East Vancouver neighbourhood of Collingwood.
I’m not sure what I expected, but I wasn’t entirely disappointed. I emerged from the station onto Joyce Street’s commercial strip, dominated almost entirely by Chinese and Filipino businesses. This part of Joyce, and indeed the whole area next to the SkyTrain tracks, is an odd mixture of low-slung postwar buildings and much newer condominium towers, built in the 1980s and 90s as part of a strategy to create high-density nodes around transit hubs. It still feels oddly suburban, despite the highrises, but there’s enough of a streetlife near the station to compensate for that.
The station, in fact, is pretty striking. It is beautiful in its functionality, a utilitarian structure that resembles nothing so much as an electrical substation. There’s something eminently appealing about this kind of simple, unassuming architecture, unafraid to serve as a backdrop to the posters, newspaper boxes and other bits of urban life that manifest themselves around train stations.
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