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| 1438 Mountain Street, long demolished |
What's now Montreal's newest, poshest residential project pokes the sky over Mountain Street just behind Ogilvy's, shouting out with its tryhard Eurosqueak its upscale claims of exclusivity and mystery money.
At least the adjacent lowrise structure on de Mayonnaise still flashes our urban gaudiness by lighting the red light with the Wanda strip club, which apparently declined all offers to sell out for demolition for the project.
The downtown Mountain Street location is understandably coveted, as it's retail-adjacent and occupies a desirable spot near Peel, Crescent and St. Catherine and only lacks tunnel-to-metro status to make it perfect.
The land once housed something entirely different however, with its several hundred less-affluent residents making the spot a lively place for several decades.
Its liveliest moment took place during the mayhem of a famous blaze at 1438 Mountain that killed three on 25 February 1947. The fire displaced about 200 from their homes after it set off at 4 a.m. The building was gutted and demolished soon after.
Local papers leaped on all sorts of tales of survival. At least three kids were saved by being hauled down from the building.
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| One of the three dead taken out in a body bag. They were: Alice Paterson, 45, who had moved to Canada as a domestic and had no relatives here. Frank Murdoch and Eugene McGregor also died. |
Blaze survivors mingle on Mountain, with Ogilvy's in the background.
The fire, it was later determined, started on the ground floor in a chair cushion.
The address 1438 Mountain was somewhat famous from 1941 when Emile Zarbatany was charged with attempted murder for an attack on the janitor, as Coolopolis reported a coupla whiles back.
*Lovells directory could answer this, however the BANQ site has made reconfigured it to make it impossible to search by year. If somebody has a trick to do it, please let us know.
Living downtown is only practical for those who actually work within a reasonable distance--ideally walking. Otherwise, barflies and those who consider themselves pickup artists would likely reside and lurk around there for the same reason--easy access to booze and potential prey.
ReplyDeleteStreet noise--particularly the regular blare of emergency vehicles--poorer air quality, and seemingly never-ending road and infrastructure work and related construction projects will make downtown a stressful location to reside; not a place for families to raise children who need room to play, which is why outlying residential areas with easy access to nearby parks and playgrounds were created in the first place.
"Mystery money" indeed. Those out-of-nowhere lineups of people waiting to offer their bids to occupy ridiculously-expensive downtown condos stink of anonymous, deep-pocketed foreign buyers who hire local proxies to stand in line for them. Once the sale is made, the "flippers" come out of the woodwork, even keeping premises empty as long as possible until they can "trade up". Such stock-market-type practices deny normal everyday people the chance to find an affordable home. Thankfully, the government is catching onto them (albeit slowly) and making it more difficult to abuse the system. Unfortunately, "developers" were given an escape clause which enables them to avoid including low-cost housing in their projects. Instead, they can pay a nominal fine. Big deal! This escape clause was even an issue in the last municipal election but has yet to be removed--if it ever is.
As for Lovell's Directory searches, this may be more successful by using not only the street listings exclusively, but by "reverse engineering" through the alphabetical and commercial indexes, thereby tracking down former residents' surnames and A-Z business establishments. Suburban researching can also be fraught with frustration as their location (or omission) may vary from edition to edition.
Be aware also that newspaper articles either accidentally or may deliberately misspell a surname in order to deter would-be curiosity seekers and/or trespassers in order to protect the names of crime victims and witnesses.
People--especially minors--have the right to be anonymous to the media if they so choose, although it does happen that the U.S. media can and will legally post, print, and broadcast the details of Canadian, high-profile court cases along with the names of trial participants despite the fact those names are sealed under local black out.
For example, remember when Guy Laliberte was sued by his former Brazilian girlfriend in her bid to grab most of his wealth? You could easily find his name read all about the case if you did a Google Search of non-local sources.
In the end, the girlfriend failed to win because, critically, she was not actually married to Guy despite bearing him a child, though apparently he did arrange a financial settlement with her along with child support. He could afford it, no doubt, but I suspect that Guy's embarrassment and resultant stress was likely a contributing factor to why he later sold Cirque du Soleil.
Lovell's Directory is not perfect, however, and its successor Criss Cross is a poor substitute. Too bad the Lovell's company management did not assume full control of its directories, instead handing it over to second-party providers like BANQ.
As I mentioned in an earlier post about Lovell's, local gas service station researchers will have difficulty identifying their targets because Lovell's lists their addresses by proprietor name, not by brand. Instead, one must use the main library's Yellow Pages archives which do list gas service stations by brand name and address--Esso, Shell, White Rose, Supertest, etc.
The bulk of Yellow Pages archives have yet to appear online.
Thanks…Todd article…..😊
ReplyDeleteImpossible to search Lovell's by year, you said? Why so? How are you using it?
ReplyDeleteRegarding 1438 Mountain, a quick check reveals:
Lovell's 1946 - Address 1438 with a long list of tenants, unfortunately the eventual fire victims.
Lovell's 1947 and 1948 - Address 1438 Mountain is not listed anymore. It shows only the adjacent addresses 1436 and 1440.
Today (2022), the site is occupied by 1430 The Four Seasons Luxury Residences, and 1440 The Four Seasons Hotel. Mountain since renamed de la Montagne.
Do the ghosts of the 1947 fire victims haunt the spot today? Perhaps a future episode of The Haunting will reveal the truth? ;-)
Now...here are two other major fires you may have missed during your searches:
The Gazette, July 31, 1959, page 3 "Stubborn Fire In NDG Lays Firemen Low", "14 Firemen Hurt, Overcome Fighting Tough NDG Blaze", including photos. This occurred at 5818 Sherbrooke West, the south side between Melrose and Regent.
I would have been up north at summer camp when this occurred, so I missed seeing it. The commercial buildings that exist there today are the same ones which subsequently replaced the gutted structure. They clearly look out of place in the neighbourhood and, based on the current 2022 Google Maps view, a section of the block is (or was) under renovation.
The Gazette, Sept. 9, 1960, page 1 and 29 with photos. "Three-Alarmer", "'Unwanted Stores' Destroyed In Fire". This was at 7715 Mountain Sights, the northeast corner with Pare.
Aah, this one I DID witness in person! A huge column of black smoke first got us kids' attention that evening while we were outside playing so needless to say we all ran like blazes (sorry) or cycled to the scene where the entire building was already a mass of flames--as shown in the newspaper photograph. The smoke was belching westwards, the heat crackling, and the walls literally crashing down. A truly intense and unforgettable sight. The crowd was enormous. The article goes on to acknowledge--as does the photo--how many children were there to watch--today all geezer boomers...lol.
Back in 1960 this was a newly-built, not-yet-occupied apartment building where evidently some nimby, neighbourhood residents were not too happy to learn there were to be shops on its ground floor. Nevertheless, today's identically-designed replacement structure contains an Indian restaurant and a depanneur conveniently located on the western edge of The Triangle, that odd, condo-dominated district touted as a presumed precursor to what we can expect once the old Blue Bonnets/Hippodrome, long-proposed housing project gets underway--that is, if it ever gets going at all.
Walk me through how you search Lovells in the updated banq? I think I managed to do it once but can't remember the technique to duplicate the feat.
DeleteTEST TEST - I will reply shortly. There seems to be a glitch here.
DeleteI'll send you the details via megaforce@gmail.com.
DeleteAnother spectacular fire I remember because I happened to be cycling not too far away from the area at the time was at the former Consumer Glass warehouse in Ville St. Pierre then located near the corner of 2nd Avenue (since renamed Emile Pominville) and Norman--a large property since replaced with new townhouses.
ReplyDeleteSee the Gazette, June 20, 1991, page A-1 and A-6 with photos, "Huge Fire Razes Three-Storey Warehouse".
Of additional interest to you is another article found on page A-4 in the same Gazette edition about Montreal's police officer deaths.
When i was 10yrs old there was a huge one in St Henri...I'm quite sure it was 30 yrs ago spring of 1992 in the abandoned farmers co-op mill down by the canal on st-ambroise between ste-margaret & cartier sq...it was at least 5 floors fully engulfed in flames with a spectacular rooftop explosion finale that sent the gawkers in the park running for cover...only thing left next day was a 2 story high mound of rubble...the bldg. sorta looked like the still standing canada malting mill near st-remi tunnel minus the silos which i heard from old timers had exploded about 10 yrs prior killing a cpl workers at co-op & raining debris down on st henri all the way to notre-dame...would like to find articles & images but i dont have the exact dates...also remember a big one down by ville marie express & amherst on south side where they built all those new condos...a big warehouse & huge fire late 80's early 90's...seems like mtl had a serious problem with serial pyros back in those days...back shed fires were a regular occurance all over from east end down to verdun
ReplyDeleteThe Gazette for Feb. 9, 1992, page 3 has a photo captioned "Inferno destroys St. Henri building". Cause unknown. There is no article associated with the photo. See:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newspapers.com/image/424087935/?terms=St.%20Ambroise%20fire&match=1
Since the link above is a pay-subscription site, it may only allow limited viewing access to non-subscribers.
Unfortunately, the alternate Google Newspaper Archive site (link below)
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=Fr8DH2VBP9sC
does not include the year 1992 for the Gazette. Unfortunately, many critical gaps and entire years are also missing, which confounds serious researching.
Google dropped the ball many years ago, apparently having given up proceeding from what had been the start of a promising service.
Neither La Presse nor Le Devoir for 1992 are accessible via the Google Newspaper Archive and the Montreal Star is still not included there.
Queries and complaints to Google about this failure receive no satisfactory answer.