It's because Guenter Kaussen - a German who committed suicide by hanging himself in Cologne from the pipes on the ceiling of his luxurious condo on April 15, 1985 - owned the Drummond Court apartment building.
He was said to be in debt to the tune of $133 million.
Kaussen earned such a reputation as a bad landlord that tenants once beat him in Germany in 1976. This led him to become a recluse, the German Howard Hughes, as he was known.
He once tried to evict all the Cambodians from one of his 23 apartment buildings in San Francisco simply by sending them an eviction notice. This attracted the attention of curious journalists who learned that he had a couple of interesting scams.
One was that he charged higher rents than other properties but offered two free months of rent per year to all tenants. This effectively reduced their monthly rent but he failed to mention this to banks when he applied for financing, who would lend him money based on the idea that all tenants were paying for a full 12 months. He would also offer the same buildings for collateral repeatedly, so one building worth $8 million was converted into $18 million in financing. He had an apartment finding service that would look only in buildings that he owned.
When these facts started spilling out he became despondent and broke going from assets of $438 million in 1982 to debts of $133 million in 1985.
Kaussen owned buildings in Germany, Atlanta, San Francisco and 11 in Montreal, including the Drummond Court, which was built in 1923 as a luxurious apartment building with a rooftop pool and 108 apartments ranging from 3 rooms to 13 rooms.
In 1956 the city bought it and drilled a hole in the ground level to allow traffic to go through Burnside. After building the tunnel at a cost of $1 million, the city auctioned the property for $1.75 million and the new owner made the units radically smaller, making 288 units in the building.
Kaussen bought the building sometime after that and did nothing to improve it. So it was in bad shape when he killed himself in 1985. Tenants were left in confusion not knowing to whom they should pay their rent.
In 1989 the YMCA bought it in the aim of fixing it up. But that proved to be a massive error. A 1992 report said it would need over $7 million in upgrades. Eventually the Y asked the Rental board permission to evict the 32 tenants because the building was a firetrap with poor electricity and water. The board refused but on the second try in 1996 they agreed. In 1999 the Drummond Court was demolished, subtracting one of the city's most unusual buildings from the map while adding an alluring streetscape to the downtown core.
Kaussen earned such a reputation as a bad landlord that tenants once beat him in Germany in 1976. This led him to become a recluse, the German Howard Hughes, as he was known.
He once tried to evict all the Cambodians from one of his 23 apartment buildings in San Francisco simply by sending them an eviction notice. This attracted the attention of curious journalists who learned that he had a couple of interesting scams.
One was that he charged higher rents than other properties but offered two free months of rent per year to all tenants. This effectively reduced their monthly rent but he failed to mention this to banks when he applied for financing, who would lend him money based on the idea that all tenants were paying for a full 12 months. He would also offer the same buildings for collateral repeatedly, so one building worth $8 million was converted into $18 million in financing. He had an apartment finding service that would look only in buildings that he owned.
When these facts started spilling out he became despondent and broke going from assets of $438 million in 1982 to debts of $133 million in 1985.
Kaussen owned buildings in Germany, Atlanta, San Francisco and 11 in Montreal, including the Drummond Court, which was built in 1923 as a luxurious apartment building with a rooftop pool and 108 apartments ranging from 3 rooms to 13 rooms.
In 1956 the city bought it and drilled a hole in the ground level to allow traffic to go through Burnside. After building the tunnel at a cost of $1 million, the city auctioned the property for $1.75 million and the new owner made the units radically smaller, making 288 units in the building.
Kaussen bought the building sometime after that and did nothing to improve it. So it was in bad shape when he killed himself in 1985. Tenants were left in confusion not knowing to whom they should pay their rent.
In 1989 the YMCA bought it in the aim of fixing it up. But that proved to be a massive error. A 1992 report said it would need over $7 million in upgrades. Eventually the Y asked the Rental board permission to evict the 32 tenants because the building was a firetrap with poor electricity and water. The board refused but on the second try in 1996 they agreed. In 1999 the Drummond Court was demolished, subtracting one of the city's most unusual buildings from the map while adding an alluring streetscape to the downtown core.
I remember that building well. On the Drummond side at street level were located the offices and studios of radio station CKGM, which was a popular station with Montreal teens in the 1960's.
ReplyDeleteI would've liked to have seen how they tucked the metro under the end of that building back in the 60s.
ReplyDeleteI know the year's not over yet, but the Peabody awards committee might have to give you its accolade for Headline of the Year.
ReplyDeletePeabody
My accountant lived and worked out of an apartment in the Drummond Court for years. It always felt like stepping onto the set of Rosemary's Baby. A grand setting with dim hallways, dogeared carpets and stale cooking smells. They tore the place down in the late 1990s, right?
ReplyDeletemary
June 2000
DeleteAhaha! I remember this derelict building .. dark , dusty , mirrors , hallways , gold , red carpets .. reminiscent of vaudeville or A scene from American Horror Story ...
DeleteI lived in one of Guenter Kaussen's buildings. It was the Marque on Sherbrooke and Decarie
DeleteClassic story. Kind of miss that bizarre part of downtown.
ReplyDeleteAh, memories. When my father started his business, he rented some space in that building; many times I ended a walk to downtown at his office so I could save a bus fare as he'd give me a ride back home…
ReplyDeleteThe courtyards were littered with food containers that office workers would leave on window ledges to keep cold, and inevitably, some of them fell-off…
Rich: Just look on my Metro website and you'll see a picture of the subway tunnel being built UNDER the tunnel: http://emdx.org/rail/metro/construction.php
Downtown vista not so great! That stretch of Burnside (de Maisonneuve) from Stanley to Guy is just what you'd expect from bulldozing all the north-south streets of three-storey rowhouses to create the Burnside extension. Someone here probably knows when it was done but a friend of my father said it was at the same time as Drummond Court was built. The original developer played chicken with the city and dared them to buy the land at a higher price. In the end the building was built anyway and Burnside wasn't widened until the city tunnelled under the Court. I remember the large CKGM (Pat Burns, anyone?) sign over the eastbound "portal" while Burnside was a two-way street. (Renaming brought one-waywardness in October '66).
ReplyDeleteAnyway to this day there isn't much to look at on that Stanley-Guy stretch since the older buildings never fronted on the east-west street. Lots of blank walls on either side, or Ben and Jerry's in an improvised hutch.
On a rainy day in late 1986 a lovely young woman waved to me from underneath the tunnel section of the structure. She asked to share my umbrella and I obliged and she held onto my arm. She walked with me towards Bishop Street near where I lived on Kinkora. She asked if she could come over to my place. I told her that I simply had too much homework to do and I couldn't invite her at that time. I must've been very disciplined!
ReplyDeleteFor 10 years during the 70s and
ReplyDelete80s I worked for a company in Drummond Court. Boy, if those walls could talk!
There were three entrances to the building: 1500 Stanley, 1455 Drummond, and another dingy doorway located on the north side, midway through the de Maisonneuve "tunnel".
The City of Montreal put out a tender in 1956 from which a contractor was eventually chosen to cut right through the building, thus widening Burnside (later renamed de Maisonneuve) to handle traffic between Stanley and Drummond and beyond. Up until then, there was only a narrow stretch of Burnside between the two streets which created a notorious downtown bottleneck.
(See a previous post by blogger EMDX with his photo link of Drummond Court taken mid-sixties during the cut-and-cover excavation of the Peel Metro station and tunnel).
The clay soil in this area was very difficult to work with during the preliminary excavation necessary for the construction of new buildings nearby. Alcan must have spent a fortune digging, pile-driving and shoring up the foundations of its new office expansion just a little further north on Stanley Street during the 1980s.
In 1959, radio station CKGM (AM 980 back in the day) opened its studios at 1455 Drummond, and Montreal talk-radio was born, eventually employing the services of the legendary and controversial call-in hosts Joe Pyne and Pat Burns. Years later, CKGM-AM and their sister station CKGM-FM (later renamed CHOM-FM) moved to larger studios on Greene Avenue in Westmount.
During the 60s, the Heidelberg Restaurant opened with its door just south of the 1500 Stanley entrance. Its sign can just be made out in the photo linked from EMDX's post.
To be continued...
The Drummmond Court Saga - Part Two:
ReplyDeleteI can confirm that the electrical system in Drummond Court was definitely inadequate because whenever our office air conditioner was on and we simultaneously ran the photocopier, the circuit breaker would pop and we had to call the management office in the building to have them reset it. We'd literally be without any power in the office until this was done.
A real nuisance! Needless to say, we soon learned how to juggle our office equipment on and off accordingly, but requests to the management to upgrade the amperage fell on deaf ears. They never wanted to spend any money unless they really had to.
Constructed in 1923, this building was still being heated by steam boilers right up until the end! Our office radiators would often get blazing hot to the touch and even start hissing from time to time, but it did a good job keeping us warm in winter, although there was a fiasco when one of the system's exit pipes which poked out from the brick
wall facing the south side laneway gave off an ear-shattering blast for hours on end during the daytime, making it virtually impossible to concentrate on our office work or hear clients over the phone. I presume that pipe served as some kind of system purge or cleaning procedure, I'm not sure, but it was damn loud!
A quick complaint to the City of Montreal's Noise Pollution Department Inspector forced Drummond Court's management to fix the problem, but they were furious that we'd "squealed" on them, despite the fact that the excessive noise was in fact a violation of the law.
There were other incidents. Apparently, one day a despondent businessman, who was a resident on an upper floor, committed suicide by jumping from his window. I believe his body came to rest on one of the exterior landings and not on de Maisonneuve itself.
To be continued...
The Drummond Court Saga - Part Three:
ReplyDeleteThe elevators were slow with some of their doors painted a horrific crimson colour. I was once told that a tenant who had recently emigrated from somewhere in the far east actually plugged some sort of portable cooker into the elevator's electric outlet and was caught frying food for himself as he went up and down from floor to floor. Presumably he was attempting to save on his electrical bill, or maybe such practices are considered "normal" in the Third World, who knows. What was he thinking? Anyway, he was evicted.
Near the newsstand on the first floor was a little restaurant called the l'Escale. It was no big deal, and in fact I once got food poisoning there!
I never saw or heard of any serious crime taking place in or around the building during the day, but night time was a different story with reports of drug-dealers and muggers
lurking around that mid-tunnel entrance to the building and sometime during the 70s and/or 80s there was a temporary half-way house for paroled criminals
between de Maisonneuve and Ste. Catherine Street, and I do remember some surly-looking characters standing around there from time to time during lunch hour.
The building structure itself was weird; probably compromised by the drastic renovations of 1956. I remember sitting at my desk and on a regular basis the building would vibrate like a minor earthquake had struck. I can only assume this was caused by the Metro trains running beneath the street. Police, ambulance, and fire truck sirens were extremely
loud whenever they zoomed through that tunnel as well!
To be continued...
My friend JL had a camera shop in the building. He said the rent was really very cheap. He was the one who told me most of this story in fact.
ReplyDeleteThe Drummond Court Saga - Part Four:
ReplyDeleteNot the best building in town to work, to be sure, but it was convenient to all the nearby shopping and services. Furthermore, my occupation at the time enabled me to be in contact with many attractive women whom, over the years, I wined and dined at nearby restaurants during lunch hours. Now, that was fun! (Remember the Pam Pam?)
It has been said that the new building which replaced Drummond Court isn't architecturally appealing, but I think it is definitely an improvement overall.
There are undoubtedly a million stories about Drummond Court. These have been only a few of them.
As a related back story, read the Montreal Gazette article of June 3, 1954, page 17, entitled "City Council Approves Burnside Street Opening", which outlines details of the city's long-term plan to connect Burnside Street westward from Stanley to Drummond by demolishing part of the Drummond Court Building, thus creating a tunnel "arcade" through-way.
ReplyDeleteAs we all know, this project eventually created what is now de Maisonneuve Blvd.
Complaints of the project's inevitable disruption to the then-residents of Drummond Court can be read in the Gazette article of July 3, 1956, page 9.
The guy on the photo is not Kaußen. It's actually an actor called Hermann Lause who played Kaußen in the movie "Ich bin nicht Gott aber wie Gott" (I am not god but like god).
ReplyDeleteI lived in an apartment building he owned once, it was the Marques on Sherbrook and Decarie. That place was a nightmare. I moved in and found the place half painted, electrical cover plates not on, no drapes or blinds. I kept asking when it would all be fixed but never a reply. I applied to the Regie and a hearing date was set. They where ordered to do the work and lower my rent. The main entry door didn't lock and the intercom never worked and a person was trapped in the elevator, homeless would come in and sleep on the hallway floors.
ReplyDeleteEvery Friday night Buddy Gee had a top 10 list and if you were a certain number of caller and had the right answer, you won a record, (sometimes a 45, sometimes an LP). A few times I was lucky enough to go to CKGM in that building to pick up my prize!
ReplyDeleteSee the Gazette for March 26, 1923, page 4, "Huge Apartment House Going Up. Drummond Street Structure by Y.M.C.A Will have 150 Suites".
ReplyDeleteThe building replaced a small house that for many decades and despite many attempts by the city to purchase its surrounding and obstructing property, blocked the flow of downtown east-west vehicular traffic; streets then named Burnside, St. Luke, and Western Avenue which in 1965 were amalgamated into Blvd. de Maisonneuve--a one-way west route that finally ran uninterrupted all the way from Harbour Street (du Havre) in the east to West Broadway in N.D.G.
In the mid-1980s, however, The City of Westmount decided to close de Maisonneuve between Melville Avenue and Lansdowne Avenue in order to deter the steadily-increasing, vehicular through-traffic by replacing that section with a bicycle/pedestrian path and thus extending Westmount Park further south.
In any event, the construction of the Drummond Court building in 1923-24 only allowed a narrow lane to its north which still prevented through-traffic.
In 1956, the city managed to expropriate the lower northern section of Drummond Court thereby creating a tunnel through it.
Drummond Court was demolished in the fall of 2000.