City to demolish old incinerator ramp
The city plans to demolish the ramp to the old incinerator on des Carrières, a job expected to start in the new year and take till sometime in spring.
Dinu Bumbaru of Heritage Montreal says that removing the ramp is a mistake, making the whole old structure inaccessible in future.
Nicholas 19:13 on 2025-12-16 Permalink
One day we’re going to try to tear down the Met and fill in Decarie and the preservationists are going to say we need to preserve these mid century monuments.
bob 20:05 on 2025-12-16 Permalink
The whole structure should be inaccessible. It should be gone altogether. Why is it still there, other than the cost involved in removing it? Not everything we’ve ever built is worth preserving.
Ian 23:11 on 2025-12-16 Permalink
It’s still partially in use. Not just the site, but some parts of the infrastructure are connected, including hydro.
The big concern in tearing it down is the massive amounts of contaminants. If you ever go up on the roof you can marvel at the asbestos insulators. Of course asbestos was mixed into the concrete too. Oh and the whole reason the place got shut down was dioxin contamination.
For adventuresome types the site will still be accessible, the ramp just used to be the easy way in before the garage doors were welded over.
Ian 10:58 on 2025-12-18 Permalink
addendum:
Perhaps of interst, there is an incinerator almost exactly like ours in Berlin, but still in use as they were more careful about sorting their garbage. It appears in the Julian Rosenfeld art film/ installation, “Manifesto”, specifically Manifesto #9. If you’ve ever been in the des Carrieres incinerator the state of it is an amazing contrast.
ARCHITECTURE – Worker in a garbage incineration plant
Bruno Taut, Down with Seriousism! (1920)
Bruno Taut, Daybreak (1921)
Antonia Sant’Elia, Manifesto of Futurist Architecture (1914)
Coop Himmelb(l)au, Architecture Must Blaze (1980)
Robert Venturi, Non-Straightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto (1966)
https://www.julianrosefeldt.com/film-and-video-works/manifesto-_2014-2015/manifesto-architecture-/
CE 11:39 on 2025-12-18 Permalink
What are they currently using the facility for now (other than parking municipal vehicles)?
The incinerator features heavily in the movie C.R.A.Z.Y., it’s often in the background of different shots throughout the film
Ian 17:29 on 2025-12-18 Permalink
I’m not sure about now but a couple of years back they were using part of the buolding for storage for the muncipal fleet. The ground floor area is still running hydro.