Montage du jour : La rue Sainte-Catherine près de Mansfield

6 comments

1. People born too recently cannot understand what fixtures the Woolworth’s and especially Kresge’s were. You shopped there. Ate at their massive lunch counters. Kresge’s was famous (in our house at least) for their take-out pasteries. Yum!

   That said, I simply cannot remember the Strand. I must have seen it or even been in it (kids were not allowed in cinemas much back then, because of a horrific fire) but I’m drawing a blank.

2. … and wait: was the Strand/Pigalle torn down or simply redeveloped as the Cinema de Paris?

   It was in the same location, when the new building, know at the time at least as the Capitol Centre, went up.

   I think the article might be inaccurate. And that the cinema space was redeveloped as a twinplex and not actually destroyed until after the Cinema de Paris folded, when the space was then finally converted to retail…

3. I think it is also interesting to note that Ste.Catherine was a 2 way street then.

4. The Cinema de Paris opened in 1968 and closed in 1995. It was situated at number 896 on ste-Catherine street west next to the Dunn’s restaurant and the Stand/Pigalle theater at number 912. The Strand theater was demolished by Famous Players in 1973 to make way for an office complex called Centre Capitol.

   Here a picture of the cinema de Paris around 1989 : http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y60/italiangerry/Cinemas/CinemaDeParisMontreal.jpg

5. Merci Guillame, I remember when the Capitol Centre was being built; perhaps you do, too.

   I’m still thinking the old cinema was not completely demolished, but rather, absorbed into the new structure — with the cinema space chopped into a twinplex — upper and lower levels — but the rest of the facade and entrance torn down, and a new street number assigned.

6. «perhaps you do, too»…Not really, i was born in 1983 !