Maybe I’m just exposing myself to a barrage of angry comments by stating that I actually like this parking garage. You might not expect a garage on such prime real estate, located across from Dominion Square, right next to the historic Sun Life building. And while it may not have the impressive columns of its neighbour, I think it’s got some pretty snazzy architecture nonetheless.
Compared to surface parking, stacked parking garages like this one minimize the surface area devoted to cars and can reduce their visual presence. If well-designed they can even have animated facades. (Granted, this one is animated by a car rental establishment.)
What do you think? Is there a future for parking structures in this city?
19 comments
Yes, underground. The Dominion Sq. Building was built with six hundred spaces under it.
If you want to get cars out of the downtown core, then you can’t advertise or have above ground parking lots. Even half-half buildings, like Tour Union on de Maisonneuve, is tacky and gross – besides, who wants to work out of building that’s mostly a parking garage anyways – not exactly a prestige address, nor do you have many options vis-a-vis design.
Multi-leveled above ground parking garages belong near commuter train or outer-ring Metro stations, if they’re downtown, they should take a page from the 1914 PQAA recommendations – underground or ‘hidden’ by filling in the courtyard.
As for this specific building it’s hopelessly out of place and I’m certain a far more useful and integral building could use this space better. As an office tower it could probably go to about 15 floors before people would start complaining, and it would be particularly interesting if the building was designed to reference the neo-classicism and italianate Beaux-Arts style of the other prominent buildings on the space. Even better, design it to give a staircase feel between the Sun Life, it and the Dominion Sq. Bldg – very postmodern.
I like parkades better than surface parking lots, but I still prefer an actual building on a location as prestigious as that.
I like it too. Though rare, there is such a thing as a parking garage that fits in. There used to a garage on Guy street, was a Hertz in there too I think, that I used to like, across from Guy Metro.
Haha, it’s like a parody of modernism — a “shocking”, ugly concrete structure dedicated to the storage of cars, while displacing some other useful urban function (social housing, perhaps?). It’s worse than the one at UdeM.
Has april fool’s come early this year?
And there is always the getting slowly famous parking garage of the Kansas City Public Library.
http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/images/46.jpg
The best part of this parking lot is that it has one of those weird elevators that is more like a vertical conveyor belt with lips to stand on. Simple, as long as you don’t goof off. It’s also dual purpose, acting as a parkade for Avis as well as a parking lot for any extra spaces available.
Eh. It’s no beauty, but at least it’s an honest structure. No worse than the monumentally tacky postmodern tower proposed for the lot a while back, anyway:
http://www.mtlurb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=106&postcount=1
I like it too — for shocking ugly concrete structure for cars, it’s really not that bad. Interestingly, Montreal and other Canadian cities put limits on the number of spaces you can have under your office building, unlike in the U.S.; the goal is to promote transit use apparently, and it’s one of a few factors that explain why Canadian cities, which are more American in layout than European cities, still have on average twice the transit ridership than U.S. cities: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10110&page=13
Parking structures aside, this is a really interesting piece of architecture from the late mid-century period. Not exactly a concrete block and certainly not ugly. I’m not particularly a believer that we always have to build structures that “fit” into the surroundings; that generally results in a boring urban fabric. I do agree that anything built on the site would have to be as low-rise given the Sun-Life Building. I’d hope that it can be converted into something else.
BTW… Tour Union is a tear-down waiting to happen. It is a perfect lot for a mixed use office / hotel tower.
Don’t forget about this one:
http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200707.html
But it is sustainable! It is solar powered!
Glad to see that I’m not alone as a longtime secret admirer of this garage. Better that structures like this do something interesting — with a big raw concrete structure, there’s lots of opportunities to bolt some weird stuff to the exterior — instead of unsuccessfully trying to hide or pretend that they’re something else.
Still, I have a hard time accepting above-ground garages on general principle, and can’t bring myself to endorse them as having a “future in this city” as such. Wishful thinking, though. If we’re going to have them, I say make them bold rather than retiring.
I like it too – I wouldn’t wish any more parking buildings downtown, and I am surprised we still blight our CBD cityscape with street parking, but I can appreciate this structure as an icon of an era when people had a different perception of what modernity is.
The only thing I don’t like about it really is that the concrete lozenges are actually very badly maintained, which is obvious up close. Maybe this building could be converted into something that doesn’t require windows? Like a theatre or department store.
I like it, too.
Back in the Fifties a ‘Pigeon Hole Parking’ garage opened in Montreal.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/11/pigeonhole-parking-lot/
In which you parked your car on the arrivals side of the building and got out, locking the doors.
A large freight elevator then arrived and a roller arm slid out from the elevator and pivotting rollers swung out from the arm, clasped the car under the wheels and pulled it into the elevator cage.
The elevator operator then took the car up and deposited it in a ‘Pigeon Hole.’
An observation window in the lobby allowed patrons to watch the elevator in it’s cycling.
The client received a chit for his auto, and upon return from shopping or whatever, you presented the chit and the elevator went and retrieved your auto from it’s hole, presenting it on the departure side of the building.
I now cannot remember the street this garage was on, but it was North/South oriented.
Years later I saw a late night film featuring a Pigeon Hole Parking building, and, altho’ names were changed for effects, I suspect it was the one in Montreal.
Unlike the garage in the photo, the building in Montreal was totally enclosed.
I parked there once, it smelled of urine and frankly looked badly guarded.
It’s funny because I walked next to it yesterdaya and told myself how ugly the thing was. It actually looks like it’s going to collapse. The entrance’s structure right below the word “parc” is not straight anymore. You can even see it on the picture and no, it’s not an optical illusion.
Why are almost all of these comments so virulently anti-car?
Cars are beautiful.
I love it, too! I think it’s as worthy for preservation as any grain silo. The fashion these days is to raze anything to do with the automobile and its infrastructures, especially from the last century. All that revisionist architecture only ends up in regret.
Incidentally, I came across this site researching Parc Pigeon Hole, which I’ve since discovered is being built on Notre-Dame and St-Jean. I guess it was named after the crazy 50’s style garage that used to be there, which I did not know was called “pigeon-hole” parking until I came across this site. I must admit that the structure really didn’t look good in Old Montreal, though. It’s cool they’re naming the park that’s replacing it after it. (Search the intersection on Street View). I was fascinated by it as a kid.
Tour Union! I remember it as Morgan’s Parkade. Damp and dark.
Tour Mansfield: Gawd that’s awful. Too bad its sister Le 1000 De la Gauchetiere got built.
Kansas City Public Library garage: I love it!