No Montreal spot offered a more evocative taste of rustbelt glory than the Guy St. bridge over nowhere, a 2,000 foot overpass built in 1931 and demolished in 1987. The bridge offered a heart-piercing view of a downtown skyline contrasted with the gritty train yards below, later replaced by a barren expanse of of mud, rocks, dandelions and strewn junk.
Magic Montreal moment: treading loftily in piercing winds on an afternoon winter sunset above ice-and-snow-covered mud to the Golden Square Mile from a down-and-the-heels Little Griff Henry pockmarked with shabby landmarks like the Bar Victoire and the Salvation Army.
A similar span a few blocks east at Mountain failed to deliver the same experience as the skyline view was less impressive.
The bridges were built to get people and vehicles over the train tracks below. They were pulled out, leaving the area curiously nude for decades.
From then on those those wandering over the bridge from below St. Antoine to near Notre Dame were left to existentially ask: why am I on a bridge here when there's nothing for it to span? The lands below were slowly filled up with housing and now there are no fields, no bridges, just memories.
Kristian,
ReplyDeleteCPR and CNR didn't go "union" into the new Central Station even though CN had argued for just that.
CP trains continued to use their own tracks further north on the escarpment where they are still used today by AMT commuter trains. The tracks under the Guy and Mountain Street bridges went into the old Bonaventure Station facing Chaboillez Square (where the Dow Planetarium used to be) and were used by CNR trains. The station would be roughly in the middle of Peel Street today between St. Jacques and
Notre Dame.
Bonaventure Station was named for St. Bonaventure Street, a short section of what today is St. Jacques. Place Bonaventure and the Metro Station are all named for the same thing.
The CNR continued to use Bonaventure Station after their new Central Station opened in 1943. Several local passenger trains still used Bonaventure in the late 1940s and possibly until the very early 1950s.
In 1947, the CN and City Of Montreal came to an agreement to move the tracks and sheds back about 200 feet west so that Windsor Street (Peel) could be extended south of St. Jacques. CN eventually built a new freight terminal building fronting on the new extended Windsor (Peel) Street. The tracks would be used as a freight terminal well into the 1970s.
There had been streetcar service ("79 Guy Lower") on Guy south of Dorchester to Wellington and eventually Centre and Atwater. The streetcar track crossed the Grand Trunk/CNR tracks south of St. Jacques at a level crossing of four railroad tracks. With imminent construction of the Guy Street bridge, the streetcar service on that portion of Guy was abandoned in 1927 to be replaced by one of the early bus routes in the Montreal.
The station at Chaboillez Square was the Bonaventure Station, later freight yard. The CPR was at its Windsor Station up Windsor Street and the CNR at Central Station
ReplyDeleteNo "Union" station here, in Montreal.
ReplyDeleteCPR always refused to do this.
But the AMT should totally do this, consolidate all commuter trains to Central Station.
This could totally be made by building a new 700m viaduct.
Indeed yes, and there was no such named station as "Union"
ReplyDeleteThanks. I've read about local downtowne train historiee recently but have also been reading intensely on a ton of other local historical subjects too as I'm busy writing what I hope to be a reasonabliee complete nostalgia book about Montreal. Suggestions welcome.
ReplyDeleteI'm at work at present on a history of my 'neighbourhood', St-Antoine and St-Jacques between Peel and Guy, bracketed by the CPR trackline, and what was the CN/GTR tracklines/railyards. Will get it into your hands when done - soon.
DeleteOn Pages 168-169 in 'A la Belle Epoque des Tramways' par Jacques Pharand, there is a description of a train striking a streetcar on Guy where they crossed the once-eight 8 tracks of the CNR to Bonaventure Station which includes a photograph of the streetcar on it's side.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.editions-homme.com/ficheProduit.aspx?codeprod=192873
This event took place on January 25, 1927, and on August 14th. the streetcars were replaced by Autobuses.
Locomotive similar to that on train which struck the streetcar.
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/photos/cnr_steam2/5290a.jpg
Three years later the overpass was constructed.
One remnant of the CNR into Bonaventure Station is the almost-concealed underpass on a curve on Notre Dame btwn Workman and Rue Station, where trains to/from B. could loop East around to Point St Charles and Victoria Bridge.
It may have been smoky, gritty and odiferous, but Smokestack Montreal was, in several ways, more interesting than what is there, now.
Thank You.
That stretch of land beneath and east of the Guy Street Bridge was once notoriously known as the St. Martin Blocks, part of Little Burgundy.
ReplyDeleteIn the late 60s, Mayor Drapeau proposed demolishing the slums, building a new housing project, and moving the slum dwellers elsewhere. However, as expected, some dwellers complained. See the Gazette, January 25, 1968, page 36, column bottom right-hand corner, heading: "Little Burgundy Association Hits Out At Slum Re-Location".
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19680125&id=6D0jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=158FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5888,4969289&hl=en
Eventually, the new housing project went ahead and exists today, albeit the district still has a somewhat sleazy ambience.
Addendum:
ReplyDeleteGazette, July 31, 1968, page 13 re. Little Burgundy urban renewal project:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19680731&id=T5AjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0p8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3119,5761307&hl=en
St. Martin Street today:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.490525,-73.57291,3a,56.9y,272.33h,92.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sblIXVHsLc1k52gGlKy5PBQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Correction:
ReplyDeleteLittle Burgundy's former St. Martin Blocks slums was WEST of Guy Street.
Take a tour of this district via Google Maps to see how the district has been upgraded over the past few decades.
Kristian is pulling the wool over us. This isn't the Guy street overpass, it's the Mountain Street one. I was curious about the churchlike thing on the right-hand side, and the large building on the left looked vaguely familiar. The large building was the Boys' Home, and the church on the right is marked Methodist Church on the 1913 Goad Atlas. The building in the distance beyond the lady on the sidewalk would have been part of the “Canadian Express Freight Shed” per the Atlas. All these good things were around Mountain St., not Guy.
ReplyDeleteOut of the picture to the right and immediately in front of the CNR yards stood the St. Antoine Market which had probably been demolished by the time the picture was taken.
A friend told me he almost committed suicide as a boy by jumping off the actual Guy Street bridge. He’d just confessed in church to his first erotic experience and the priest made him feel so wretched my friend afterwards walked deliberately from the old St. Anthony’s church on St. Antoine out onto the bridge to end it all. Not the most likely place to succeed, though for a twelve year old …
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThat's incorrect Pierre. The Calvary was up Guy Street from where I now live, above where the CPR tracks now run. As 'mtc1streetcar' says, this is the view, I believe south, down Mountain, from St-Antoine St. I'll double-check my records.
DeleteThis link will take you to the similarly incorrect Wikimedia Commons page where I've asked them to correct it from Guy St to Mountain St.: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File_talk%3AViaduc_over_CNR_tracks_Guy_Street_-_Montreal_1932.jpg#Incorrect_designation_of_location;_this_is_actually_the_view_south_on_Mountain_Street_from_St-Antoine
DeleteNaughty BOY! He should go visit his OWN Priest???
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young, it was "Bless Me, Father, for YOU have sinned!"
Gosh, we were bad! But, who wasn't, in that turmoil of Genes and the Onset of Adulthood.
Some of WE never got it, including moi.
So many did not make it, and ended it all, far too soon.
September 10th. is rolling around, again.
No, I'd NEVER do it over, Life.
Sorry.
Thank You!
Hello, there, Mr. M.P. & I,
ReplyDeleteTo digress: considering that your youthful memories and interest in railways and tramways is well-documented in this blog, I wonder what other pastimes you nurtured back in the day?
Did you, for example, collect stamps, coins, hockey cards, etc. What were your favourite comic books (Tarzan, Tales from the Crypt?) and the early 1950s TV shows you watched (The Lone Ranger, 77 Bengal Lancers, The Honeymooners, Foreign Intrigue?)
I, for one, well remember the thrill of seeing Hockey Night in Canada (in black and white, of course) with our fabled Canadiens teams including Rocket Richard, Jacques Plante, et al when helmets and face-masks weren't yet dreamed of, no instant replays for viewers, and Tom Foley conducting interviews between periods.
Five Stanley Cups in a row! Never again in our lifetimes, to be sure!
Off Topic?
ReplyDeleteOrigin of the Word 'Kickback?'
The following film, interesting in many respects of Science from the Rust Belt Era, may contain the origin of the word 'Kickback' re Politics?? After times 3:00 and 4:05. The sloped device is called a 'Kickback.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEAUFP3bPjU
Another Rust Belt Era film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJfnk2S330
If at first you do not succeed, build a larger machine.
Thank You.