History & Context:
My site lies between 1621 and 1635 boulevard Saint Laurent just below Ontario, beside a white brick corner building which used to house the Banque du Commerce, but more recently housed the former Hi-Bar, and is currently being renovated into a new nightclub. My site, which is currently a private parking lot, fronts St. Laurent on the west, and Sainte Dominique on the east. The former is a mixed-use but mostly commercial street and major spine in Montreal. The latter is a quaint residential street. The site is also approachable via an allyway, accessible from Ontario Street.
SITE CONTEXT:
Today, boulevard St. Laurent is ever presently animated as much by its crowds as by its catchy enterprises, whether they be the flashy nightclub interiors in its upper parts, the screaming signs of strip clubs in its middle parts, or the soft quaint lights of Chinatown. Notwithstanding, the particular area in which my site lies, namely between Ontario and de Maisonneuve streets, has yet to be defined. Contrasting other blocks along boulevard St. Laurent, the character of each of which is very well defined, this particular block is relatively neutral. North of China town, yet not exactly part of the sleek top-notch scene, my chosen site just borders the red-light district (of St. Laurent and St. Catherine) to its north. Although it has recently witnessed the emergence of the fast food industry, which it could not escape, my block remains a mixed bag of small ethnic shops.
Image: View of the east facade along St. Laurent taken from a point across the site
Image: View of the east facade along St. Laurent taken from a point south of the site
In fact, the ethnic enterprises are the true tellers of St. Laurent's history. Throughout its existence, and on various spots along its stretch, St. Laurent has transformed to assume various and multi ethnic identities, and in the process, has earned the reputation of an animate bustling street. As is commonly known, there are no great monuments or outstanding buildings to see on St. Laurent. What it offers, along with the continuity of its long history, is a parade of city life, human in scale, diverse in its background, which, through the recurring cycles of change, poverty and prosperity, has retained a sense of neighbourhood, stubbornly rooted in people.*
From its origin as the heart of the fastest growing suburb, known back in the early 1800s as Faubourg St. Laurent, boulevard St. Laurent has evolved into a street of small shopkeepers, artisans, and workers in specialized trades.* It has the particular feature of a central location which, in the past, bisected Montreal into the East and the West Sectors. At that time, its occupants were predominantly French and Anglo-Saxon, with the existence of Irish and Scottish communities, and traces of Italian, Jewish, and German ethnics.* St. Laurent's development has always been organic, despite the city's grand plans, in the late nineteenth century, to remodel its image and personality into a "Champs Elysees". While city planners succeeded in widening boulevard St. Laurent by demolishing parts of its buildings on the west, shopkeepers in St. Laurent market vigorously opposed this and halted further demolition. The preservaiton of St. Laurent's human scale is owed to this.
Meanwhile, the greater influx of immigrants resulted in an eclectic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural mix of establishments for Arabic, Portugese, Romanian, Ukranian, Vietnamese, and other communities. All of this painted St. Laurent street with an international ambience formed by a population with a great diversity of backgrounds. Such has been the social context of this spine, which is the primary reason for its unintimidating, familiar air.
The above paragraphs, which offer a concise background about the interesting evolution of Boulevard St. Laurent, remain relevant to the social contextual parameters of my project. People have treaded St. Laurent from all walks of life, which renders it a very familiar, accessible and approachable street. Such are the qualities with which I would like to characterize my project, because the patients will similarly come from all sorts of social classes and ethnic backgrounds. I have, thus, targeted a most popular area, rich in culture, yet a quiet and almost underdeveloped portion of it which I believe will be suitable as the urban setting of my proposed project.
Image: Close up of grafiti on wall bordering the site to its north
Image: View of the south facade of the site taken from St. Dominique
As mentioned in the theory part, on my site stood buildings which belonged to someone by the name of W. Rochon, which apparently was a common family name according to the late nineteenth century directories of Lovell's StreetGuide of Montreal.
Maps: 1890 maps showing the existence of previous structures on the proposed site. The tinted blocks are indicative of the buildings' previous locations.
Legend:
Pink represents masonry construction
Yellow represents wood-frame construction
Site Proposal : theory : regulations
