Montréal vu de Dallas

[ProposMontréal]

Avec quelques commentaires architecturaux pour vous tous.

 

Source: Dallas News

 

“This,” says Martin Robitaille, “is the Old Sulpician Seminary. It dates to 1685 and is the oldest building still standing in Old Montreal. And this,” he goes on, sweeping his hand at a building across the street from the seminary, “is Mistake No. 1.”

 

The more formal name of the latter edifice is the National Bank of Canada Tower. It was finished in 1967 and is done in the International Style: 52 concrete pillars rising 32 stories, covered in black granite, framing black-tinted windows. “Its elegant, sober appearance was intended to harmonize with the rest of the historical quarter of Old Montreal,” according to a panel in the nearby Centre d’histoire de Montréal museum, but many, including Robitaille, think it most certainly does not.

 

Robitaille could be considered biased: He’s a professional tour guide, and his beat today is the section of Montreal just north of the St. Lawrence River, roughly a dozen blocks long and three blocks wide, that is the city’s historic center. The quarter’s small, crooked streets are filled by handsome buildings of dressed limestone, some somberly Scottish and plain, some effusively Italian, with intricate carvings and terra cotta ornamentation. Stand at any of a dozen intersections — Sainte-Hélène and des Récollets is a good example — and you are transported, architecturally at least, back in time. Which is why Robitaille finds the incursion of something in the International Style so grating. It really ruins the mood.

 

His tour begins at Place d’Armes, in the shadow of a statue of one of the people who founded the city in 1642, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve. “They came here to convert the natives,” Robitaille says. “Not so successful. After about 20 years, it became a commercial center. The fur trade.”

 

As European demand for fur grew, so did Montreal. Its success as the funneling point of pelts from Canada’s vast forests to the Continent made it the obvious spot to locate head offices when settlers began to pour into the west. “The Golden Age was from 1850 to 1930,” Robitaille says. “That’s when Montreal was at its best.” And that’s when most of the buildings in Old Montreal were constructed.

 

Robitaille’s tour takes us along Rue Saint-Jacques, once the heart of Montreal’s — and Canada’s — financial district. At the corner of Rue Saint-Pierre he points out four bank buildings, two of which, the CIBC and the Royal, still perform their original function. The Royal’s banking hall, built in 1928, is “a temple of money,” our guide says: soaring stone, coffered ceiling, echoing and imperious.

 

The other two banks have been turned into high-end boutique hotels . LHotel is the plaything of Guess Jeans co-founder Georges Marciano. Marciano has sprinkled its lobby and hallways with $50 million worth of art from his private collection, including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miró, Robert Rauschenberg , Marc Chagall, David Hockney, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.

 

Across the road, the former Merchants Bank is now the St. James, “considered the most luxurious hotel in town,” says Robitaille. The top floor is where folks like Elton John, U2 and the Rolling Stones stay when they’re in town.

 

We twist and turn through Old Montreal’s narrow streets. Hidden away at 221 Saint-Sacrement is one of the few old houses left, three stories, solid stone. Today, it houses offices. “Most of the architecture surrounding us is commercial, not residential,” Robitaille says. The banks were the most lavish in design, but the warehouses, many now renovated as condominiums, were nearly as spectacular.

 

When Robitaille was a child, his parents never brought him to Old Montreal. Then, as now, it was a bit cut off from the present-day downtown, further north, by the auto route Ville-Marie. After the banks decamped in the 1960s, Old Montreal spent the next several decades in decay. At one point, much of it was to be torn down for yet another freeway.

 

A slow-swelling preservation movement finally gained traction in 1978 when the grain elevators blocking the view of the St. Lawrence River were demolished and a riverside walk opened. Over the next three decades, investors began to see the value in resuscitating the neighborhood. Now, more than 5,000 people call Old Montreal home, living mainly in converted warehouses. Restaurants, cafes, small hotels and plenty of art and clothing stores keep the area bustling.

 

A tour like Robitaille’s is a fine way to be introduced to Old Montreal. For those who want to know more, two museums, the Centre d’histoire de Montréal, in a 1903 fire hall next to Place d’Youville (the site of the two Canadas’ parliament until rioters torched it in 1849), and the Pointe-à-Callière Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History, are the places to go. In the basement of the latter are the ruins of buildings that previously stood on the site, along with part of the tunnel that Little Saint-Pierre River once ran through and the city’s first graveyard, filled largely with the bodies of those killed by Iroquois attacks in the settlement’s earliest days.

 

For those who prefer to strike out on their own, Discover Old Montreal, a well-illustrated booklet published by the provincial government, provides a detailed self-guided walking tour and is for sale in both museums. For those who just want to soak in the ambience, the simplest thing is to start in Place Jacques Cartier and stroll first east and then west along Rue Saint-Paul, Montreal’s oldest street. (Its rough paving stones make comfortable walking shoes a necessity.)

 

Robitaille’s final stop is at the Château Ramezay. Built in 1705 as a home for the governor of Montreal, it served several other purposes through the years, including sheltering Benjamin Franklin in 1776, before it became a museum in 1895. “It’s one of only six buildings from the French period, before 1763, still standing,” says our guide.

A block away is the modern courthouse complex, finished in 1971 and designed by the same people who did the National Bank tower. “That,” says Robitaille with a final flourish, “is Mistake No. 2.” And so Old Montreal comes to an end.

[yarabundi]

Martin Robitaille est un de mes collègue de travail. Je suis content de lire sa perception du Vieux-Montréal. Il est rare qu'entre nous nous discutions de nos impressions du Vieux-Montréal.

[vanatox]

ahhh, j'ai presque pensé qu'il s'agissait de toi yarabundi. On peut dire que vous partagez le même dédain évident pour la tour de la Banque Nationale et le nouveau palais de justice...

[mapdark]

J'ai personellement toujours trouvé le building de la banque nationale et le palais de justice d'une laideur exceptionelle!

 

Le premier pour ses murs noirs et trop industriels et le deuxième pour L'HORRIBLE mur aveugle qu'il affiche sur l'une de ses faces.

[ToxiK]

J'ai personellement toujours trouvé le building de la banque nationale et le palais de justice d'une laideur exceptionelle!

 

Le premier pour ses murs noirs et trop industriels et le deuxième pour L'HORRIBLE mur aveugle qu'il affiche sur l'une de ses faces.

 

J'aime bien l'édifice de la banque nationale, mais il ne devrait pas être là où il est. Il devrait être dans le centre-ville (avec une vingtaine d'étage de plus...).

 

On devrait peindre une murale sur le mur aveugle du palais de justice (un peu comme la murale pas très loin de la place royale à Québec). Quelque-chose qui pourrait représenter l'histoire de Montréal. Ce serait très difficile d'être plus laid que le mur...

[acpnc]

On est bien pris avec ces monstruosités qui occupent et écrasent leur espace environnant. La BN est une erreur urbanistique caractéristique des années 60 où le respect du patrimoine était encore un rêve d'artistes et de profs d'histoire. Le Palais de Justice, lui, en plus d'envahir le secteur de sa masse noire et grise, est un malheureux compromis pour cause de budget. Les libéraux de l'époque ont littéralement "scrapé" l'élégant édifice proposé, pour finalement accoucher d'une solution pas chère et sans aucun intérêt architectural. Remarquez qu'ils ont fait exactement la même chose avec l'Institut d'Hôtellerie devant le carrée St-Louis.

 

En conclusion rien n'est nouveau sous le soleil, on était déjà à cours d'argent et on construisait à rabais, sans penser que la pire gestion en affaires est d'appliquer une solution permanente à un problème temporaire. Morale de cette histoire le problème est devenu permanent et serait drôlement plus cher à corriger maintenant.

[Monsieur_MA]

J'aime bien l'édifice de la banque nationale, mais il ne devrait pas être là où il est. Il devrait être dans le centre-ville (avec une vingtaine d'étage de plus...).

 

Je suis entièrement d'accord. C'est bien plus un problème d'emplacement que d'esthétique.

Je trouve que la tour de la Banque Nationale aurait été élégante sur René-Lévesque.

Le Palais de justice, qui est plus banal, aurait presque passé inaperçu au centre-ville.

[yarabundi]

ahhh, j'ai presque pensé qu'il s'agissait de toi yarabundi. On peut dire que vous partagez le même dédain évident pour la tour de la Banque Nationale et le nouveau palais de justice...

 

Ça aurait pu en effet être moi mais...

 

[J'aime bien l'édifice de la banque nationale, mais il ne devrait pas être là où il est. Il devrait être dans le centre-ville (avec une vingtaine d'étage de plus...).

/QUOTE]

 

...je ne le déteste pas. Je suis du même avis que Toxik là-dessus.

[kool maudit]

i used to feel similarly about the courthouse and the national bank. now i love them. we're montreal, not unesco quebec.

[LindbergMTL]

La dernière fois que j'avais vu le monolithe noir de la Banque Nationale, il avait grand besoin d'être revampé, surtout le revêtement extérieur, il n'y avait plus de peinture noire à certains endroits. J'espère que les proprios vont ou ont remédié à la situation.