The United Church...(#31)

One block east of The Bay. The beautiful facade of this church was buried behind a row of retail shops for decades. (Montrealers, you remember Dapper Dan's?)

Right below this rose window is a panel of carvings, including likenesses of rabbits, owls, deer and lots more. I think that steeple on the left looks some kind of a Gothic-Space Agey rocket about to take off.

The view from one of the studios at United Yoga Montreal, which until recently was located in one of the new glass wings abutting the church, but is now in the second floor of the old Jacob office building right across the street.

Case in point: The Bay

I pass The Bay (short for The Hudson's Bay Company) frequently, but as often as I've seen it, I still find myself wondering how it looked in years past. The majority of the window archways have been boarded over, including the one you see on the lower right and most if not all the ones on the side and back of the structure. I still find it to be a stately, grand old building, but when compared to the earliest photo I've featured here, it's easy to see why it's often overlooked. From far away, you can see its 'good bones," but amidst the jumble of shops and mall entrances and signage that now clutter and dominate St. Catherine Street, it doesn't stand a chance. And if you're on the sidewalk in front of it and look up, all you're going to get is awning. The small trees that lined the sidewalk are no more and the sky around it has been filled up with apartment building balconies. Air, light, grass, stones that show slightly different tones one from the other - all of this was invisible to passersby a century ago...

Follow the Bixis and you'll find The Bay!

A beautiful building, with residences to the left and the United Church visible to the right. (I'll post a more modern shot of that steeple for you soon).

Montrealers celebrating outside Morgan's (now The Bay), V.E. Day, 1945. If we tried, could we still detect the street car tracks on St. Catherine?