Montreal City Weblog

Kate 11:06 on 2023-01-08 Permalink Reply  

• Ephraim 18:10 on 2023-01-08 Permalink

  Ah yes, badly insulated buildings with weird configurations should be used for community service buildings by groups that have difficulty to pay for heating and maintenance…. really? You can knock it down, put up a better building and use geothermal heating and cooling as well as insulation and run it for much longer at a cheaper price

• Kate 22:25 on 2023-01-08 Permalink

  Ephraim, a couple of months ago I made a not dissimilar argument and DeWolf countered the idea, saying Montreal without its many church spires would not be the same.

  I’ve thought about that since. Ephraim, you’re right about the superiority of modern construction, but here’s the thing: these buildings already exist and many of them have been used for community purposes for a century. What’s the likelihood of getting decrepit churches taken down, not for profit, but in order to construct community centres for the general good?

• Ephraim 11:48 on 2023-01-09 Permalink

  Let’s look at the other side of it. The church building represents something and if you are not of the faith it may not be positive. But it’s really a weirdly configured building and has height which makes it even worse for heating… you have to heat all the air above before you start to really feel warm. But also the land… You can also build other things into the space, like social housing above it. You can build different size spaces and community usage spaces. For example, you can configure offices for different community groups but have a shared kitchen and a shared banquet hall that you can rent out.

  I know we have a tendency in Quebec to treat buildings as if they are there, we might as well use them. Which leads to having some weird unusable buildings in Montreal. How many old McDonald’s locations are now being used and are still identifiable. We are so reluctant to do anything with an existing building that at the corner of Atateken and St-Catherine there is a store that sat empty for more than 10 years and I think the latest incarnation is a fabric store. Across the street from a bank in a Consumer’s Distributing spot that was a La Belle Province.

  Corner of Cote-St-Catherine and Decarie there was a BMO, it’s been empty for at least 20 years, if not more. Recently, someone started reconfiguring the building…. and yet, if they had knocked it down years ago, they could have built a 10 to 15 story apartment building that is right in the path of public transit and a walkable distance to a metro station.

  And how about the building that was one a flea market on Decarie. Then it was empty for years. Eventually Insight used it. Now I think it’s used by Shaw. Dupuis almost all the way to Isabella… Again in a great location for public transit, a few streets away from Queen Mary metro station and it’s being used as office space because it’s so purpose built no one could figure out what to do with it. And let’s move up Decarie to Wellstead… empty building. The next block has a giant closed post office and then just up the street from Snowdown, another empty building with a parking lot next to it.

  And I’m sure that many other people can point out buildings sitting empty in Montreal because they were purpose built and we are too scared to knock them down and put up something useful. Maybe what we need is a tax credit to knock down some of these buildings if you put up rental stock.

• Kate 12:16 on 2023-01-09 Permalink

  Ephraim, you’re right about a lot of this. In my immediate neighbourhood, there’s a huge church building on Crémazie, decommissioned, but not much use for anything else. This was one of the last big classical churches built here, 1931, but after the Met was built right in its face and people stopped going to Mass, it became a white elephant.

  A few years ago there was a guy who thought of trying to convert it to a sort of cafe-theatre – Crémazie is not the most inviting street, but this building is steps away from Crémazie metro station, so it’s easy to get to. As I recall, the borough said he would have to invest thousands in repairs first, so it never happened. I wouldn’t think it’s old enough for heritage status but the borough had some basis to insist on repairs being done expensively, such as redoing the roof with copper.

• Ephraim 18:25 on 2023-01-09 Permalink

  So easy to declare something as heritage… entirely another thing to be able to afford to. And that’s exactly the problem. The borough should, once declaring a building heritage, find a use for it and otherwise have to pay the costs of maintenance. Because it’s really easy to declare it’s heritage, it’s entirely another thing to afford to do it. You really really really should want to protect it, if you declare it. And when you have no responsibility, it’s easy to do.

  You know, where Ex-Centris is located was the old Austrian and Hungarian Synagogue… and now it’s not even remembered. And how about the original Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Montreal? Little St. James and Notre Dame Streets (you know… where the courthouse is built), the second is on Cheneville Street (I think it’s the Chinese Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit, now, but not 100% sure), then 1443 Stanley, now a condo. Funny how easy it is to pave over Montreal’s Jewish history. I bet that Leonard Cohen’s home is likely more revered than any of the synagogues. And PS: https://goo.gl/maps/X5ecNNPNtWvPWqY36 is the old Adath Israel building… notice that 10 commandments at the top of the building 🙂

• Kate 22:54 on 2023-01-09 Permalink

  A lot of synagogue buildings were converted to other purposes: the apartment building on Duluth, the Collège Français on Fairmount, the Ukrainian hall on Hutchison. But a lot of churches are also gone. Have a look through this list and you’ll be amazed how many churches have risen and fallen here.

  I’m not making little of the disappearance of synagogues, but I don’t know the history of why they were demolished. I suspect in all these cases it’s a mixture of urban populations moving, and religious practice changing and declining, but there may be other factors I’m not considering.

• Ephraim 13:01 on 2023-01-10 Permalink

  We put a higher value on churches than we do on synagogues, being that they are just buildings. I see the point of saving them, if useful. But just like an appendix, sometimes you just have to move on. Think of all the lovely social housing that we could build in some of these places… energy efficient community spaces, social housing, bright futures for children. These are just not sustainable… if they were, they would be maintained. And as I said, if it’s that important to the city… then find the money… otherwise, you shouldn’t be allowed to declare it heritage and make it someone else’s burden.

  Imagine you have an appendix that burst and needs removal and the doctor telling you… no, we are going in and going to fix it, even though you are going to have to take medication that costs $1000 a month for the rest of your life, because it’s a heritage appendix. Most church buildings are just that.. buildings.