Thought that you all might enjoy this read (Montreal Mirror, c. 2000)
City of lost dreams
>> A haunting look back at the Montreal that never was
By KRISTIAN GRAVENOR
Sometimes you get ahead of yourself, Montreal. You start talking your big plans that you're really, really going to pull off but then you sleep until 2 p.m. and figure hey, why do today what you could put off forever? Our unbuilt city--the creation of excited PR types, procrastinating planners and imaginative architects--has recently added an amusement park at the port, a garbage-sorting station in St-Henri, a downtown baseball stadium and an area of high-tech street names in the old city. Come deep into the fiasco file and take a tour of the city that never happened.
But first, some practice. Rub your eyes really hard--harder! Now look at the parking lot where the old low-rent Overdale neighbourhood used to be until you see a gleaming $100-million condo project. Now do the same at the Seville and York theatres, the south-west corner of Guy and de Maisonneuve, the greystones around La Cité--if you see newish-looking condo havens built to the sky, you're ready for...
Mayor's freaky phallus: Mayor Drapeau long lamented our city's lack of a tower. First he conspired with Guardian Trust to build a 1,050-foot tubular steel structure. Then, in '64 he negotiated to get the Eiffel Tower temporarily moved here, and even considered building a knock-off of the Paris monument. He finally decided on a 1,066-foot tower (the height symbolizing the year of a French military victory over England) that would represent "God, light and progress." At $28-mil, God would wait as city bigwig Lucien Saulnier deemed it too costly. Saulnier's counter-proposal for a cheapo tower was ignored.
Walking on water: After the war, McGill University promised to transform the five-acre, 30-million-gallon reservoir at des Pins and McTavish into "a beautiful botanical garden." In 1957, our local Tourist and Convention Bureau recommended that the land be turned into a parking lot and a "tiered, cement amphitheatre"--in other words, a drive-in theatre. More recently, plans to remove the ubiquitous protruding metal pipes have been pencilled in on a very, very urgent to-do list.
Dome has no home: Montreal's Shoppersville, a futuristic Jetsons-esque $22-million aluminum-domed 65-store mall with parking for 2,700, was announced for the corner of Côte-des-Neiges and Barclay in 1958. The mall--which would have been our only architectural example of neo-flying-saucerism--promised shuttle buses, play areas and a free auditorium, but locals successfully petitioned against rezoning for the project.
Of-fence intended: In June 1962, the federal Minister of Transport phoned the Seaway Authority boss leading to a not-very-historic agreement to fence off the entire Lachine Canal so that kids--45 of whom were said to have perished in the 26 years prior--would stop drowning.
Fishin' on the Main: Respected local architects John Dohan and Daniel Chartier laid out a plan in 1988 to extend the Main, complete with buildings, far into the river on a man-made pier.
Lonely little flowers: When Pierre Bourque was just a flunky under Mayor Drapeau he invented an annual flower festival on the site of Expo '67. But less than half the expected four-million visitors came to watch the flowers of the Floralies grow in 1980 and the costly festival wilted and died. Three years later, Drapeau threatened us with another "event of international importance," to make Montreal "The Green City." He was politely ignored.
Playing musical chairs: Many have fought for a concert hall to benefit nostalgic Europhiles oblivious to the boringness of classical music. UofM boss Marcel Faribeault proposed a huge symphony hall on the north side of Mount Royal in 1952. But the hall only became an urgent priority in the mid-'80s when a proposal would have plopped a $100-million hall on the north side of the intersection of Ste-Catherine and McGill-College. (Across the street, 20 years earlier, a similarly bizarre plan would have seen a concrete ramp built up McGill-College from the mezzanine of Place Ville-Marie to Ste-Catherine). Drapeau moved the theoretical construct to the square across from the Berri metro, a decision Phyllis Lambert called "a slap in the face." In 1986, Mayor Doré announced a 1,200-seat concert hall called "l'Etoile" on the east side of St-Laurent near Prince-Arthur but he, too, was just bullshitting.
Downtown town down: The same determination that the railroad builders used to build this country was applied to the task of procrastinating on a plan to build our city's downtown. From 1913 to 1929, the CNR planned several Chicago-School-type skyscrapers in the area around where Place Ville-Marie now stands. After WWII, architects wasted more paper by redrawing the buildings in the International Style and again in the drab Modern Style in 1948.
Sort the port: Back in '85, the Lavalin report recommended developing the Old Port. Public hearings, boycotted by the MUC and the City of Montreal, considered raising the Titanic and leaving it at the site as a tourist attraction. The port people opted for inaction.
Projectus extinctus: Not long ago, Mayor Doré proudly announced a $12-million project at the extinct Quebec Pavilion of Expo '67 where mechanical dinosaurs would sort of move around. The city gave its Dinosaurium partner, Barry Sendel, a free seven-year lease on the land but the plan was buried like a brontosaurus after Sendel, a convicted fraud artist who had been sued 165 times, took off to Mexico in 1994.
Dig this: A $100-million subway was planned in 1912, but city skinflints said they "lacked the necessary authorization." Two years later it became a $20-million, four-line subway that in 1917 grew into a $25-million, three-line version sprouting from Place d'Armes to NDG and Mile-End. A 20-line, 202-mile subway that would take 20 years to build was announced in 1929 while TramCo pitched a $25-million, three-line subway, quickly dolling it up to encompass eight miles and cost $65-million.
A decade later the subway was definitely coming as the city budget demanded powers to construct "underground streets," and in '43 lobbyists argued that a subway could double property values, quell unemployment and ready us for our overcrowded future. The Executive Committee and City Council heartily approved a $100-million plan. But the bubbly stayed corked, as the project was voted no cash.
French engineers promised to fund and build a subway within four years starting in 1947, but they never called, they never wrote. And 1959 brought us a new phantom tube with now-familiar routes up Décarie, Ste-Catherine and St-Denis as well as a line up Iberville. After the metro was finally built one official plan from 1973 recommended that the trains also haul freight.
Creeping museum: News flash! The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will move from its Sherbrooke Street home since 1860 to a new building on Ste-Catherine in front of Place des Arts. Or so the museum directors announced in February, 1964. Twenty-one years later, Bell Canada Enterprises, seeking a spot for their new head office, teamed up with the MMFA on a murky project that would have had the two institutions redo the block opposite the Museum's downtown entrance. And 10 years ago the museum schemed to acquire the nearby Erskine and American United Church and connect it with a tunnel.
Trains in vain: When Mirabel airport was conceived, officials planned to demolish the greystones on the west side of Jeanne-Mance south of Sherbrooke for the "Supertrain," which would zoom to the new airport partially via tunnel. In 1983, Drapeau signed on to a $2.1-billion fast train to New York City and the Quebec government promised a high-speed rail linking the north part of Montreal island to Rivière-des-Prairies. The next year officials announced a train that would cost a couple of billion and cut 90 minutes off the ride to Toronto.
Highways of the mind: The Catholic Church planned a magnificent east-west boulevard sprouting eastward from the Monument-National in 1903. By the 1930s, the Royal Automobile Club, peeved that cars travelled an average of six miles an hour downtown, started lobbying for elevated roads. For starters, they wanted 'em from the Victoria Bridge to Dorchester, from Atwater to the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, above all CNR train tracks and on both sides of Mount Royal.
In the 1950s, planners promised--or maybe threatened--a road through Laurier Park, a tunnel under the Victoria Bridge, and a bridge to the South Shore via Lachine. In that decade, city planners announced that Côte-des-Neiges would be widened to 200 feet. Soon they shifted the would-be north-south highway to St-Denis, announcing a raised route south of Sherbrooke that would be submerged to the north.
In 1959, the fictional six-lane freeway was shifted to the Main, where engineers promised an eight-mile stretch that would allow drivers to cross the island in less than 10 minutes. That was abandoned and two years later, planners offered a $288-million project that would transport 54,000 cars per hour through tunnels drilled through the mountain, one from the corner of Parc and Rachel to Décarie, and the other from Square Victoria to the Metropolitain. Around this time Mayor Drapeau tried to convince people that the historic and scenic de la Commune should be made into a riverside speedway.
In the 80s, Mayor Doré and the province--perhaps influenced by lysergic acid--agreed to turn the Metropolitain into a two-level highway by adding a tunnel below the existing autoroute. In 1988, the province promised bus lanes over the Champlain Ice Bridge, a $2-billion beltway of highways around the island and a $78-million extension of Highway 13 to Mirabel.
Buildings that couldn't get erect: In 1965, Ed Reichman planned a 36-storey, $15-million cylindrical-shaped tower at Sherbrooke and City Councillors. One of the key would-be tenants, the Montreal Athletic Association, planned to relocate from their historic digs on Peel, but backed out of the new project when a member furiously opposed the move. The club stayed put, the skyscraper was never built and the MAAA member got tossed out of the club.
In 1975, the Grey Nuns at Guy and Dorchester sold their convent to Swiss developers Valorinvest, who promised to maintain the convent's chapel in a $138-million complex involving a 44-storey office tower, a 540-room hotel and an eight-storey apartment complex. After months of indecision, the province nixed the scheme.
In 1960, Drapeau--figuring that spaces go places--razed the St. Lawrence market at Dorchester and the Main and waited for offers from developers on a major project. He's still waiting. Ten years ago Centraide uncharitably planned to rid the city of a historic convent so they could get a wacky avant-garde headquarters on the south side of Dorchester, east of Atwater. In 1948, blundering planners threatened the Plateau with a hideous school auditorium on St-Norbert, east of Hôtel-de-Ville.
Last year, the city okayed a 24-storey, $1,500-per-night hotel on the grounds of the old Unitarian Church at Sherbrooke and Simpson, burnt down by a crazed transsexual in 1987. When it was pointed out that the hotel violated zoning bylaws, the Turkish developer Mustafa Tatlici kept shortening the proposed hotel. It eventually reached zero feet.
Ill Windsor blowing: In July 1970, the CPR announced that it would demolish Windsor Station for "one of the largest building projects in the world." The $250-million project would include a 60-storey tower built by the designer of New York's World Trade Center. While unveiling the plan, CP president Duff Roblin subliminally prophesized delays that would last approximately forever. "The trouble about announcing a plan of this sort," he said, "is that everybody expects you to begin yesterday."
All of these landmarks marked no land, found no foundation and were constructed by lifting nothing heavier than a pencil. But while our real architecture gets bombarded by the elements, our paper kingdom laughs at the wind and rain from deep inside the filing cabinet, knowing that somebody, sometime loved them.
©Mirror 2000
Source:
http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIV...600/news7.html
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