Montreal's disrespected landmark file:The Hotel Colonnade, that's it on the right with the big windows.
One of the city's great buildings sat at the southeast corner of Crescent and Dorch but Internet whack-jobs, red-eyed taxi drivers, crackheads, Tourettes-afflicted vagrants and others of their ilk think that it should be an object of derision.
The Hot Colonnade, as the burnt-out lighted E and L would have you call it, was built in the mid-60s and demolished in 2002.
The beaut was designed by legendary Montreal personality, friend of Coolopolis and former architect Michael Fish.
Fish was part of a four man architectural firm with Morris Melamed, David Croft and Jim Grainger, (the last two weren't Canadian citizens so didnt get their name on the masthead.)In 1960 Kenny Wolofsky came to their tiny office on Monkland and laid out some plans that he had paid $500 for from the city permits department. He said zoning was set to change within a new days.
The architects were thrilled. They were all under the age of 25. They had only done a couple of small projects and they were now excited to be doing a downtown hotel.
The plan was for a 10 storey bachelor apartment with a 20 by 100 foot lot, which is very narrow, of course.
Developer Morris Stahl, known for his fancy suits and Cadillacs, ran out of cash and couldn't finish the building. Some costly lawsuits ensued and it was built but at a higher cost, supposedly double the original cost.
Stahl's initial plan was to gobble up the Crescent Tavern Snack Bar next door and double the size of the project but that never took place.
The developers couldn't afford the precast facade so Stahl ordered shiny glazed bricks, fashionable in Montreal at the time.
The mortar didn't match the bricks and the architects considered it an embarrassment. They never did another downtown building.
But they became popular with developers seeking to build low-cost projects.
The building was sold and its vocation as apartments slowly switched to a hotel after news of Expo 67 came in 1962. In 1965 it was the Majestic Hotel with Godel and Shoet listed as owners.
A room went for $7.50 a night, a double $10.50
In 1966 it became the Colonnade Hotel with 65 rooms. In 1987 air conditioners were removed and tinted glass installed. Rooms cost from $55 to $95. In '86 it was sold for $4.5 million by a group of 92 investors and underwent $3 million in renovations and was rechristened
It was demolished in 2002.
Its one possibly notorious moment? The guys who set the killer blaze at the Wagon Wheel/Blue Bird Cafe on Union assembled in the bar after doing the deed in 1972.
Architect Mike Fish said of the building in 2002. "It had a decent life. It never went to jail. It did no harm. Like a prodigal son, I grew to like it very much despite its up-close defects and the original disappointments about its fidelity to our 'beautiful' designs.I gradually realized that there are no really bad boys, there are really no ugly buildings. Just boys and buildings that some of us don't want to know."
I remember this hotel very well, because back in the late 60's I had a summer job nearby and would regularly eat a big, juicy hamburger at its downstairs restaurant.
ReplyDeleteI recall being in this hotel in the early 1990's when I had a beer in the ground floor bar. Later that day I visited one of the rooms upstairs with a person who used the room as a squat for shooting up. I remember vividly he cleaned his syringe by spraying it on the wall covering it in blood. Disgusting!
ReplyDeleteMy mother worked at the bar downstairs in 74.
ReplyDeleteMy mother worked at the bar downstairs during the day. Kitchen must've been down there, as she brought lunch up to customers in the restaurant.
ReplyDeleteThis hotel saved my life. I booked a room om my own to spent new year 1980 in Montreal. On the plane coming from Brussels things went very wrong due to a extremely nasty drug experience. More dead than alive I ended high up in a room in hotel Colonnade. I had become mentally very ill and totally of the planet for over several months. Bit by bit I started recovering and went 3 times a day in the freezing cold for a walk on Mount Royal doing breathing exercises.
ReplyDeleteManagement was very helpful but refused to tell the name of an old lady who had paid most of my expenses.
Who sad my dear hotel doesn't exist anymore because for over 40 years I kept another stay in that same old room on my bucket list. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell my part of the story of this amazing place.