Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Downtown Montreal then and now

9 comments:

  1. Jean Naimard8:21 pm

    This was taken around 1960±3 years.

    Ste-Catherine was still a 2-way street, and the Phillips square still had the loo stairs unfilled.

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  2. The Other Seth9:31 pm

    There used to be an underground bathroom in Phillips Square?

    RE: the Shell sign on the Birk's building. Was that just an ad, or was it Shell's building.

    When did the Bay stop being Morgan's?

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  3. AFAIK they're still there, Seth, just blocked off with those planters.

    As for the Shell sign... it was on top of University Tower, SE corner University and St. Catherine. I'm under the impression that Shell was just the prime tenant from '56 to '74.

    Somewhere I've seen a shot of that sign in all it's night-time neonic glory. I'll see if I can rustle it up.

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  4. HBC (The Bay) bought Morgan's in 1960 but kept the Morgan's name until 1972. Did you know thet Steinberg's had a store in the basement starting in 1952? Lots of Morgan's history at www.hbc.com/hbcheritage

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  5. The Other Seth10:37 pm

    In 1954's Operation Manhunt, about Igor Gouzenko, they show Morgan's, and several other Mtl shots, like Old Mtl.

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  6. The Other Seth2:15 am

    RE: the Phillips Square bathroom, the scariest bathrooms I've seen in Mtl are the BK one next to the square, the former BK at St. C. and St. Laurent, and one in Faubourg S.C.

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  7. Ah, yes, fond childhood memories of the huge Shell Oil sign on top of that building…

    And the Steinberg’s down in Morgan’s department store (to this day, I keep calling The Gay* “Morgan’s”).

    I have no fond memories of the loos there because I never went there (but I recall seeing them). I recall the Place d’Armes ones, because I would often stop there for a leak before taking bus 48 back to NDG.


    * A guy I useed to work with claimed to me he was fired from a designer job there because he wasn’t gay, and the employee called the store “The Gay”…

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  8. Set(h) - Silent H, the way French teachers pronounced it8:05 pm

    I heard the company's named Shell because they originally sold shells. True.

    At Steinberg's in Lasalle in the
    '70s is where I first heard of someone else named Seth.

    And NDG, my father grew up in Verdun in the '40s and '50s and said people said NDG stood for No Damn Good. Is that saying still around?

    In M. Richler's The Street (guess which one), he says Morgan's doesn't hire Jews.

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  9. Phillips Square is shown at the end of a movie,'89s Cruising Bar, I believe.

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