the Craig pump station : past and present

SLOWING DOWN - “The Pied-du-Courant is this spot where the river suddenly retracts and forms a very strong current which at the beginning of the colony, stopped the ships in their trip.” (Pignon sur rue)Therefore, the sailors had to land and cross the island. We have to wait until 1824 for a ship to succeed in crossing this strong current. We have to wait until 1824 for the first ship to succeed in crossing this strong current. This is quite ironic considering that nowadays this is an axis of high speed circulation. Indeed, the vehicular traffic is now the source of this strong current, making this site very difficult to access for pedestrians.

DIS-CONNECTION FROM THE RIVER - Starting at the end of the 19th century, the activities of the Port of Montreal develop and progressively move east from their original site in the Old Montreal. Faubourg Ste-Marie develops as a neighbourhood made of a mixture of factories, newly arrived workers, and bourgeois villas, notably the Molson residency. In 1883, the construction of the Canadian Pacific railroads and of the Port moving to the east make Montreal the most important container port on the North American West Coast. While at an international scale, this connects Montreal to the rest of the world, the railroads and the port definitely cut the Pied-du-Courant from the river. By then, Montreal has totally cut itself from freshwater.

THE PUMP STATION : A VISIBLE CONNECTION - In 1887, one year after a major flooding, the Craig Pump station is built in order to regulate the water level during the spring. “This building becomes the neighbourhood’s visible symbol of Montreal’s web of freshwater now rendered underground”. (Champ Libre)

TEARING THE URBAN FABRIC - In the 1920’s the construction of the Jacques-Cartier bridge, linking the south shore to Montreal, deeply modifies the structure of the neighbourhood. The station stands in the shadow of the bridge right next to its 26th pier, taking the form of a massive triumphal arch. This destructuration started with the construction of the bridge is further accentuated by the construction in the 1970’s of the Ville-Marie expressway. As a result, it is now very difficult to trace the imprints of the original urban fabric and its buildings.

CONNECTION/ DIS-CONNECTION - Over the years, in an eagerness for communication axes, urban development has eclipsed both the presence and function of the pump station, as well as the urban fabric to which it belonged. Indeed, the purpose of the pump station was to control the overflowing water from the river. The station provided an axis as well as a barrier between the city and the river. Now, the highway and the bridge have taken over these functions. The vehicular flows as well the broadcasters’ invisible waves have replaced the river flow, around and above the pump station, isolating it from the urban fabric to which it belonged. Over the years, this area has become more and more removed from the water, physically as well as visually. Of the existing dense urban fabric, only the pump station avoided submersion. Now, the station stands not only as a reminder of a time when the city enjoyed a close relationship with the St-Lawrence River, but also as a privileged witness of the evolution of communications and of our conception of urban space through time. This lonely chimney will be the point of departure, the trigger to memory, that allows personal memory of urban space and water to emerge and merge with the historical memory of the site. My aim is to reactivate the building as an interface between the past and the present, but also between urban space and water.