Even though it clearly states ‘looking West’, I can imagine it would’ve looked about the same facing East. Can’t figure the cross-street though. Love the residential character of Sherbrooke Street back then.
I wonder if downtown public schools will ever make a come-back. It feels odd living in a city where the only downtown schools are generally private, or FACE. May become a necessity if the city is successful in encouraging more people to emigrate back into the city.
This picture looks as though it should be in the dictionary next to the expression ‘hustle & bustle’.
Again, notice the residential feel to some of our busiest, highest capacity urban streets. Seems quaint by comparison.
Going through the magazine and I couldn’t help but wonder why the city doesn’t pump out more propaganda praising the people and places that make up our city. What’s more, 43 years ago they had no problem issuing a fully bilingual monthly review. But I bet you people would say it couldn’t, or shouldn’t be done. It seems as if we hit a high water mark that year and have been retreating, in some senses, ever since. We’re still a kinda-global city which occasionally makes itself relevant, but we seem to have a hard time sustaining interest the way we used to. Perhaps a result of too much navel-gazing, too much existential angst.
Before the renovation of Berri Square and its transformation into Place Emilie-Gamelin in 1992, several proposals had been floated around about installing a new concert hall for the OSM on the site, but if the Olympics taught us anything, its that you don’t build on public space, you build beside it.
Fortunately it never came to fruition on this site, as I believe well-designed parks, plazas, squares etc provide much needed relief, and space to congregate. People do use Berri Square, but it has a bad reputation, Indeed, the day I shot these pics I spent three hours observing the space, watching how people interacted with it; here’s an abridged version of what I saw:
– 16 y o up-and-comer in the drug trade chasing off old woman who was photographing buildings around the square
– police cruiser, parked, empty, sitting in the middle of the square, by the giant chessboards (no pieces out that day)
– somewhere in the area of thirty to fifty bums, vagrants, drunks, hobos etc, probably getting the best use out of this space presently – everyone else walks around it, few cross. Those who do are either a- very aware of their surroundings, b- completely unaware of their surroundings and for that reason quickly leave or c- in the process of doing, aquiring or selling narcotics.Watch out for a rookie mistake – never buy anything in Berri, never tell anyone to go buy in Berri. You’ll get robbed, or worse.
– an urban square so completely disconnected from its surroundings it actually denigrates the value of what’s around it. A total waste of potential – considerations such as: make sure sight-lines can be maintained and ensure the plaza is open and accessible were cast aside for the purposes of an artistic statement. It’s a shame, I don’t know if Charney’s installation will work elsewhere, but its got to go for the sake of this space.
When you consider just a vital a space like this, you really wonder why they wanted to stick a concert hall right on top of it. That being said, because of its condition, I’m sure their are many people who would like to see something work here.
I happen to have recently discovered I enjoy baseball quite a bit, and the more I learned about the Expos, the more I came to realize the Expos were robbed of the pennant (at least) in the 1994 season.
Clearly the Big O was not the ideal venue for a baseball franchise, as the enormous stadium was generally impossible to fill, and offered those in attendance no real view, aside from the imposing enormity of the Olympic Stadium. The planned Labatt Stadium (which you can read all about here) would have had a capacity of 36,000 – roughly half that of the Big O.
Now, the site where this stadium would have been constructed is currently condo towers, though there are sites large enough to accommodate a stadium, such as between Duke and St-Henri along William in Griffintown, or at the site of the old Canada-Post sorting facility (incidentally, any re-development of the Griff should consider a ballpark, given the availability of large tracks of land owned by Canada Lands Corporation). Either way, the success of any new version of the Expos, should the citizens of this city ever make an attempt to get back into pro-ball, would be highly dependent on the stadium, its design and the view available to the spectators. A new ballpark would also create many new jobs and further serve as a potential venue for a variety of performances – in essence, a well-designed and strategically placed ballpark could act as a neighbourhood anchor, exactly the kind of thing the southern portion of the downtown could use.