Photo du jour: Balcony life

4 comments

1. Nice shot. Do you know what’s going on with the block across the street here (North side of Villeneuve between Jeanne-Mance and Esplanade)? Over the winter many of the first floor apartments seemed to be abandoned, but one that wasn’t had a sign in the window stating “This house is not for sale!” And now there’s a lot of activity at the front and back, with crews painting and landscaping the heck out of the whole block.

2. I think they’re being converted into condos. Even though it looks like a row of triplexes, that particular block was built like an apartment building, with central heating and other shared resources. (There’s a big boiler room in the back alley.) I assume that, because the whole block would have had a single owner, it would be a centrally-managed condo project, too. But that’s just a guess.

3. Interesting! Thanks for the informed guess.

4. Sure enough, I was walking by today and cut through the alley. There’s a house in the back with a big modern furnace in the basement, which seems to feed all the homes, Soviet-style, and a large shared courtyard that is getting a new deck.