Caserne 26 to reopen
A good sequence of photos on Le Devoir shows the reconstruction of caserne 26, the heritage fire station that went up in flames in 1999 when firefighters rushed out on a call, forgetting they’d left a pot of oil heating on the stove. (I doubt they ever lived it down.)
The new building incorporates materials from the original one, shown here.
carswell 09:41 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
FYI the photo collage in the Devoir article is small but the image embiggens nicely if opened in a new tab or window.
Kate 09:47 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
Yes! So it does.
The original building had blank windows on the top floor. I can’t tell from the new photos whether they’ve been recreated in that form, or actually revived as windows. Might go have a look at it soon.
Joey 13:31 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
Do I follow? It took 25 years and more than $20 million to rebuild a fire station?
Kate 15:13 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
They could’ve had a fire station for less, but that was a detailed building, and had to be put back together with a modern interior faced by a vintage exterior. So different types of construction specialty must have been called on. If anything, I think the side facing des Érables, with the mixed brick and stone, may have been trickier to re-create than the all‑stone front face.
Also, the building used to also be the city hall of the town of de Lorimier, which makes it more historically significant than a simple fire hall. Some info about that town here: it was annexed to Montreal in 1909.
DeWolf 17:57 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
The actual project in question only took a few years. There were a lot of ups and downs in terms of funding in the years prior to that. And $20 million sounds about right for a project that, as Kate notes, essentially involved creating a new building to the exact scale of the old one, then painstakingly putting its façade back together stone by stone and brick by brick.
Kate 19:55 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
Yes, that building stood boarded up for years after the fire, with no work being done.
Joey 15:58 on 2024-05-18 Permalink
I guess the point is it would be pretty depressing to learn that, even if the work itself only takes a few years, a building as significant as a fire station required 25 years to rebuild, especially given that money seemed to have been no object. I wonder what the fire fighters would’ve thought if you had told them how long it would take back in 1999.