Mile End Memories is a non-profit organization in Montreal raising awareness about the area’s unique cultural heritage and history. Architect Susan Bronson is a long-time resident and founding member of Mile End Memories.
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Permalink for Mile End Memories
Posted by Adam Bemma
Categories Architecture, Events/ Évenements, Housing / Habitation, Mile End
“I don’t know” I said aloud as I perused the fast food menu. “Orange drink is usually gross, and it’s kind of expensive too…”
“Oh its worth it,” the counter-girl piped up immediately. “Our Julep is made from fresh-squeezed oranges and our secret ingredient. It’s a family recipe that goes back to 1932.”
As much as “secret ingredient” fails to inspire confidence, the counter girl’s enthusiasm was itself refreshing. There was no doubt that she had complete faith in her product, and so I consented to a glass of Gibeau Orange Julep.
She filled a waxed paper cup from a pipe that hung down from the ceiling, and I couldn’t help thinking, as I did when I was a kid, that the 40-foot sphere above us was a massive julep reservoir.
And it was worth it. The fresh-squeezedness of the oranges was unmistakable, the “secret ingredient” reminiscent of creamsicle (although apparently it’s fat-free), the texture foamy down to the last drop. It was really, truly good.
Turns out I had a lot of misconceptions about Orange Julep. Not only does it taste good, its legacy goes back almost 80 years.
I’d always assumed that the massive roadside Orange was a pure 1960s kitch. Indeed, the 40-foot orange was constructed in 1966. Its shell was made with fiberglass segments ordered specially from a local pool manufacturer.
But my counter girl – and the paper julep cup – had claimed that Orange Julep has been kicking since 1932. Turns out that our massive orange monument is in it’s second incarnation. The original building, which was was in nearly the same location, dates back to 1945. It was a smaller, concrete orange with windows on the second story. (I can only assume that it took the first 13 years of julep sales to raise the money for this jewel).
The original Orange Julep building, in the 1950s. Photo taken by M. Connolly, Hydro-Québec. From the BANQ, Cote: E6,S7,SS1,D58727
But Montreal’s most iconic (well, perhaps only) road-side attraction was hoppin’ long before the metro and the Décarie expressway opened up this neighbourhood to residential and commercial development. In fact, the original Orange was a victim of the widening of Décarie for the autoroute.
There was a tramway along Décarie in the 1940s, linking NDG to Ville-Saint-Laurent, but the area around Namur was largely undeveloped. Picturing the quirky casse-croûte on the open road somehow captures my imagination in a way that its current position on the edge of the Décarie expressway, kitty corner to outlet malls, has never managed to do.
It also helps explain why the big Orange has retained a tradition of summer-time car shows, à la 1950s Hot-Rod nights. For those of our readers who don’t have a car to pimp on site, it’s also right across the street from Namur metro.
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Permalink for Orange Julep an Oldie and a Goodie
Posted by Alanah Heffez
Categories Architecture, Historical / Historique
St. George’s Anglican Church on Peel above de la Gauchetière Avenue des Canadiens-de-Montréal, in the shadow of downtown office towers.
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Permalink for Photo du jour – St. George’s Anglican Church
Posted by Devin Alfaro
Categories Architecture, Downtown, Photo du jour
It maybe a little late, but happy New Year folks.
To me, the new year brings a new job, a new office on St-Hubert up near St-Zotique and, by extension, a whole new neighbourhood to explore. The view from our office window is cleanly cut in half: from the top we can see the bare branches of trees and the mixed use commercial-residential building across the street. The bottom half is metal trellis coated with a thick blur of snow on glass.
Which naturally got me wondering how the Plaza St-Hubert acquired its distinct glass awning? The story seems to date all the way back to 1959, when the Saint Hubert merchants association wanted to convert the commercial street into the world’s biggest shopping centre, spanning 5 blocks. Expropriations were planned to make way for a 750 store shopping centre (currently the plaza has about 390 stores) that would have closed St-Hubert street to traffic and surrounded it with parking lots. The plans boasted “one square foot of parking space for every square foot of selling space.”
This grand destination was dreamed up to shelter local merchants, mostly independent family-run businesses, from increasing pressure from new shopping malls and chain stores. “Our aim is not a competitive scramble for bigger stores, for super or ultra-modern markets,” said Wilfred Sauvé, then president of the St-Hubert merchants’ association.
Then, in 1971, a second plan to create a covered pedestrian mall was proposed. But it was turned down by the executive committee after the failure of an experimental pedestrian mall on Mount Royal Avenue. The Mount Royal mall had been hastily abandoned that April after only 7 months in operation.
Finally, in 1984, the city and merchants association finally agreed on a more modest sidewalk covering.
Mark London, then executive director of Heritage Montreal called the canopy a “good piece of high-tech industrial design” but critiqued the uniformity imposed by the glass canopy in a 1985 Gazette article.
Last year there was a rich variety of 300 storefronts and signs set into hundreds of buildings, some brick, some stone, some low, some tall. Now the overall visual effect is of a single uniform, monotonous glass and steel structure 1.2 kilometres long…The buildings themselves are almost impreceptible above the canopies and the structure often lands right on the centre of windows.
The result is to obliterate the diversity of shops and buildings wtih a structure that has the friendliness, interest and warmth of Mirabel Airpot. A year ago St. Hubert St. had so much variety it bordered on the garish. But with this new project, the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of uniformity and control.
His point is really driven home when you look at old photos of Plaza Saint Hubert before the green glass awning.
Yet when I came to the office was during a snowstorm in December, I distinctly remember stepping under the glass onto a relatively clear sidewalk and thinking: this is architecture that makes sense in Montreal. The Plaza St-Hubert brings together the ideal of Main Street shopping with the harsh realities of our climate; is pedestrian friendly without excluding cars, bikes and buses.
Despite imposing uniformity at a local scale, the glass awning makes the Plaza distinct within Montreal, creating a unique destination and this in turn seems to help foster diversity of small independent businesses. I find that it also creates a sense of cohesiveness which tempts shoppers to walk the entire length of the plaza.
I get the impression that the Plaza is hardly loved and seen from the second story window, the project is harder to swallow. Many of the second story apartments and have lost their balconies and views though the Gazette archive has no mention of complaints from local residents.
Made in Montreal have a cute video entitled “Plaza St. Hubert – petite histoire du kitch à Montréal.” I find it interesting is that the president of the St Hubert merchants’ association interviewed in 2009 actually has similar things to say as his counterpart back in 1959: The Plaza aims to be popular but not too trendy or luxurious. At some point the in-scene is fleeting. And the plaza wants staying power.
(Go to the made in Montreal website for a better quality version of the video)
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Permalink for A view from Plaza Saint Hubert
Posted by Alanah Heffez
Categories Architecture, Rosemont - Petite-Patrie, Streetscape
A feature interview with Eric Paradis, organizer of Save the Main, about the city of Montreal’s plan for Boulevard Saint-Laurent.
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Permalink for Save the Main
Posted by Adam Bemma
Categories Architecture, City Hall / Hôtel de Ville, Development / Développement, Downtown, Elections / Les élections, Historical / Historique, Quartier des spectacles, Spacing Montréal, The Main
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