Art Deco in Montreal

It’s been almost 2 weeks since my friend Louise & I visited Montreal, but now that I’ve been through all the pictures I can finally show you a little of our Art Deco tour of the downtown.

We drove to a mall & went the rest of the way in on public transit (bus + metro). We hopped off at Place d’Armes and looked up the hill at our first target: the Aldred Building.

This beauty was built from 1929-1931 and has lots of details in the limestone as well as the metal:

And then inside I managed to snap some shots of the lavish lobby before I was informed that I wasn’t allowed to do that. It’s all marble and metal and stained glass. It’s amazing. The outside is very grey and the inside is more warm and golden.

Over the course of the next few hours we saw quite a few buildings that had similar types of features, so I’m going to group them together for fun.

Lots of amazing metalwork around / on doors:

500 St. Francis Xavier

235 St. Jacques

1414 Drummond

Peterson Hall

Exterior stone details:

155 St. Antoine

225 Notre Dame

1684 Maisonneuve

Interior grilles:

Aldred Building

255 St. Jacques

The Crescent Building

Marble:

1414 Drummond

The Crescent Building

Peterson Hall

Overall it was a great day. We got a few strange looks, but we also met a few lovely folks who wanted to share information about the amazing structures they are lucky enough to work in. The guy at the building on Drummond was especially nice.

The day had symmetry too. We started by looking at an imposing building on one hill and finished by looking at an even larger building on another hill. We accidentally crashed graduation ceremonies at École Polytechnique to see the Roger Guidry Pavilion.

I hadn’t appreciated the amazing location of this building with its view. My pictures don’t do it justice. The building is enormous and the lobby is very grand. The ceiling is extremely unusual.

I recognized a grille that I’d seen in the Supreme Court, which isn’t a huge surprise, since Ernest Cormier was responsible for both projects. I was very tempted to pick up a graduation program for its amazing picture of the ceiling, but I managed to restrain myself.

So there you have it. That’s the quick overview of the buildings in Montreal that I’ve managed to get to so far. There were some other buildings that I’d really like to get to, but on this trip I stuck to a walkable group of buildings in the downtown, plus a couple of others. I guess I’ll have to go back!