St Gabriel’s is condemned
St Gabriel’s church on Centre Street in Point St Charles has been condemned because the structure is not sound. Till recently the church housed a food bank, which has now moved to an empty storefront nearby. The church building was severely damaged in a fire decades ago and may never have been properly rebuilt; its social support role is far more important now than the original religious purpose for which it was built.
Jebediah Pallindrome 11:58 on 2020-09-08 Permalink
The city should buy all the old churches the diocese no longer wants or can’t maintain, deconsecrate them and use them for public purposes (or even rent them back to religious groups).
Demolition via neglect is a sorry way to go. Besides, some of them have great accoustics and nearly all are located in primo locations. They’re also excellent examples of indigenous architecture.
Kate 14:52 on 2020-09-08 Permalink
That sounds very well, but the actual church spaces are of limited usefulness. People have been using church halls forever for sales, food banks, social assistance offices of all kinds, but the actual sanctuaries are expensive to maintain and have limited application if you’re not doing religion.
Your idea would also be vastly expensive for the city. Example: there’s a big old church on Crémazie a little east of the metro station. It was called St-Alphonse-d’Youville while it was operating, but it actually didn’t have much of a lifetime. It was completed in 1931, but the Met cut across its face in 1960 and everyone stopped going to church a few years later anyway. It was already long moribund when the whole lot was sold for condos, but here’s the story: a guy had backers to turn it into a café and show bar – good location near a metro and a highway – but the borough won’t let him (that item’s from two years ago) because he won’t pay for the roof to be replaced with solid copper. He’s willing to put a new roof on – but copper is expensive. Nope. And we’re not talking Notre Dame de Paris here, you know?
Jebediah Pallindrome 17:08 on 2020-09-08 Permalink
Limited usefulness now, but once the pandemic ends in 2046 it would be great to have more space for libraries, concert venues and theatres.
I get it though, I’m a bit of a dreamer.
That story is infuriating. The city/province isn’t very good at helping small businesses but they are world class champions at putting up every conceivable roadblock.
david25 01:11 on 2020-09-09 Permalink
Also, I’m sure we all appreciate the crazy requirements that owners make buildings in various neighborhoods look historic when they’re not, or even to demodernize existing buildings by rebuilding elements that may have existed historically on buildings so that they look like they did 100 years ago . . . while actual historic buildings of real value are rotting away.
When I’m Archon of Montreal, I’ll redirect the entire budgets of all borough-level planning department staff who work on zoning directly into a big historic preservation fund. Why should we pay a bunch of people city wages, so that they can take money off normal people who are trying to build or even just own housing/commercial, with the result of increasing the cost of housing/commercial for everyone? When we could instead kill that whole process, and funnel the savings into stuff we all agree is actually valuable?