I think we've done a lot of mourning of demolished neighbourhoods here but still, looking at the 1947-vs-nowaday maps can be a perplexing and sometimes upsetting experience. One of the most inexplicable demolition events is the zapping of a rather large series of blocks - four hectares or so (whatever that is) - below Dorch just west of Papineau, for the CBC tower.
The beauty of a skyscraper is that it concentrates stuff upwards and so you reduce the ratio of humans per footprint. That's why Le Corbusier championed building upwards - you could have lots of beautiful vegetation, forests parklands below if everybody lived in the sky.
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| The area south of Dorch and west of Papineau was almost entirely razed for no good reason |
There is an excellent exhibit right now at the Montreal History Centre called "Quartiers disparus" about this neighbourhood, the red light district cleared to make way for Les Habitations Jeanne Mance and Goose Village, cleared for the autostade. All completely bilingual, testimonials from former residents subtitled when necessary...On until September 1st.
ReplyDeleteNot many people know this but the building - while seemingly small compared to the whole piece of land - is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg: there's a huge subterranean structure, with television studios and workshops, on several underground levels.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm with Dominic, you don't see the whole structure and all it incorporates. Not to mention the base of the building, which is wide, low, squat but nonetheless takes up a large area.
ReplyDeleteWhat's unjustifiable nowadays is the massive parking lot; they should build new, more useful things, on the extra space in the lot. In my eyes this would (should) include just greening the hell out of it - this sector could use far more green space.
But we cannot forget that it replaced a massive slum. Granted slum clearance isn't something we're used to today (largely because we don't have several city-block sized slums) and even then, we've abandoned the techniques of the past (i.e. by mandating an as yet still insufficient number of subsidized housing units, but I digress). But at the end of the day, what's done is done and we're better off without the slums.
It's unfortunate that we didn't think of better ways to protect the pre-1960s level of residential density in the urban core. As those 1947 photos attest to, there were many more places to live in what is today nothing but block-sized office towers and other mega projects. It's unfortunate how desolate parts of the downtown are these days.
I agree that the big problem is the parking lot. I think I've come across some city plans to redevelop the area. I'd like to see them retrofit a street grid, although the large footprint of the building may make that difficult.
ReplyDelete(Btw, your link goes to the square viger concrete park, is that intentional?)
That was Drapeau's "cité des ondes", yet another megalomaniac project to concentrate electronic media in one place.
ReplyDeleteBut this was just a pretext; this was really demolished because it was full of poor people.
Since poor people are undesirable (they are of dubious moral character because they are not rich, and risk voting against the interests of the rich - when they cannot be prevented fom voting), it is best to get rid of them by demolishing their habitat.
The project is moving forward, I just interviewed for the coms manager role... which went to a Franco, shocking! Anyway, the project is moving forward, it was put on hold due to the recession.
ReplyDeleteI worked at the Maison Radio Canada from when it first opened until I was transferred to Vancouver in 1990. As Dominican V. mentions there is a lot of activity going on beneath those parking lots,studios,shipping,
ReplyDeleterecieving,set design,carpentry shop,etc etc. The footprint is 10 city blocks!..while working there i always wondered why was it built out in the East end of Montreal..and not closer to downtown..i had heard that the original plan was to have it built near Place design Arts, but somehow
it ended up where it is today..because they wanted to encourage development in that part of town. Which happened.
There is nothing very appealing or attractive about that part of town, anyway, with the constant, heavy truck traffic, and the persistently longstanding lack of direct access to the river front beginning east of Berri which is still zoned industrial.
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