Vers 1918-2008
Inauguré en 1918, l’édifice de la Sun Life fut agrandi à maintes reprises depuis ses débuts. L’église Knox situé à l’est de l’immeuble fut démolie et remplacé en 1923 par une nouvelle aile s’étendant jusqu’à la rue Mansfield. En1927, une nouvelle phase d’agrandissement força la démolition de plusieurs résidences le long de la rue Metcalfe. Enfin, la tour de 24 étages débutée à l’automne 1929 fut complétés en 1933.
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Prior to 1918, this corner featured a marvelous spired building, I believe it was a YMCA. Absolutely delighful. I came across it during my own perusals of Montreal photo archives: McGill’s, I believe.
If I had a link I’d post it. I do not, alas.
I have one, i will post it tomorrow !
The “Sun Insurance building in Montréal” was Harry S Truman’s favourite building… Go figure, for the guy who lobbed two atomic bombs on mostly civilians…
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When the building was planned, it was estimated that by 1965, whe whole building would be filled with the clerks needed to process all the life insurance transaction it was projecting to do.
However, this projection failed to take account of the availability of computers in the 1950’s, so it finally was able to avoid completely filling-up the whole building with it’s minions…
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In the 1960’s, some hippy in the publicity came back from vacation wearing a beard. The bosses complained all the way up to the corporate food chain, until it hit the president’s office.
Here, in front of a huge portrait of Mathew Hamilton Gault, the founding father, the president gravely pondered the questions as whether wearing a beard was proper enough.
Then, his decision made, he gravely announced that “if a beard was good enough for our founding father, it surely good enough for today”… This signaled the start of acceptability of facial hair at the Sun Insurance Company…
This building was mentioned in an urban planning class I took, claiming it had the highest F.A.R. (floor area ratio) in the city. The ratio compares the amount of usable floor space to the area of the land occupied by the building.