herr2ck: Montreal Trip, pt. 1 - Rue Sainte-Catherine

August 2025.

I explored Montreal a lot more than in just my single-building articles. These next several posts will document my various wanderings across downtown in a more broad fashion. The first stop is Rue Sainte-Catherine, Montreal’s principal commercial artery.

486 Rue Sainte-Catherine West

This Beaux-Arts design seems to borrow a lot of its expression from the Renaissance palazzo. Though the base has been altered, everything above is original, including the winged shield ornamentation.

Eaton Centre/Goodwin’s

The Eaton Centre takes up an entire city block, but for this post I’m focusing on the eastern Renaissance Revival structure. The building is a shopping mall built by the defunct Toronto department store Eaton’s, but its first three floors date to the 1900s and were built for Goodwin’s department store. The building was sold to Eaton’s in 1925, and a three-story addition was completed in 1927 by Ross & Macdonald. A second addition brought the building to its current height in 1931. This top floor includes the Art Deco Ninth Floor Restaurant, which I did not see but is very pretty.

Eaton’s was Montreal’s largest department store for decades, but it had begun to decline in the 1970s. Attempts to restore its market share included the construction of various shopping malls, known as “Eaton Centres,” which were placed in urban centers to spur urban renewal and prevent the effects of suburbanization. However, many of these malls faced high vacancy and low patronage. Montreal’s original Eaton Centre was built onto the rear of the 1900s building in 1990, replacing an earlier mall known as Les Terrasses. It is only one of two Eaton Centres to still exist today. In addition, recessions and expansions by big-box stores further hurt sales. Eaton’s was purchased by Sears in September 1999.

The Eaton’s department store space became the Complexe Les Ailes in 2002, named after Les Ailes de la Mode. It and the neighboring Eaton Centre were combined into one interior space in 2014. Les Ailes also closed in 2016, and it was replaced by Decathlon.

I had some calamari and roast potatoes in Time Out Market (the food hall inside) one night, and it was probably the best food I had in Montreal by far.

680 Rue Sainte-Catherine West

This is a pretty ugly Modern building, but it is one of the last holdouts of this stretch’s formerly grimy nature. Lots of worn plastic signs.

682 Rue Sainte-Catherine West

I don’t actually know the address of this building, it’s just my own estimate based on the others nearby. This is an extremely chaotic 1914 Gothic Revival building in poor repair:

The building is obviously vacant, which has resulted in various graffiti all over. Its first floor has been altered to an Art Moderne design. However, its cornice is pretty dang cool (the missing portion appears to be negligence from demolition of the adjacent building):

This building has had its neighbors demolished, and I would argue it probably is not long for this world either. The party wall looks pretty messy:

Now, I thought this old Blade Runner-esque neon sign was cool, but it actually refers to one of this building’s old neighbors…

…the Super Sex strip club.

(Google Maps)

Unfortunately, this masterpiece of kitsch was demolished between 2019 and 2022, part of a larger attempt to sanitize Rue Sainte-Catherine’s reputation for certain institutions of debauchery.

698-700 Rue Sainte-Catherine West

These two historic holdouts cling to each other while their shoddy mid-century neighbors have been demolished. 698, the leftmost building, has a fancy Renaissance Revival facade with small Ionic columns surrounded by taller pilasters. There’s a balustrade along the top, which has been poorly repaired. It may have been a theater at one time.

700 seems like a slightly newer Beaux-Arts design, largely flat masonry with small and simple cornices. It’s weird that its insulation is just left exposed:

Montreal City and District Savings Bank Branch

Historic photo of the building. (Facebook)

Like BMO’s West End Branch (coming up next), this appears to be a newer branch of a larger bank established in Old Montreal. I found only one source about this building, some random Facebook post, so most of this is gonna be my own extrapolation.

This appears to be a Beaux-Arts bank design, c. 1900-1920. I’m unsure how long it operated, but by the 1970s, this area was being redeveloped into the Les Terrasses shopping mall, which is the Eaton Centre today. The building was a Banana Republic for a time, but it is currently vacant. Luckily, the interior decor has been preserved.

Pretty simple design, Corinthian pilasters supporting a cornice above and arched windows in the bays. No fancy pediments or anything. However, the doors have a carved lintel with some symbols of Canada and commerce:

Bank of Montreal West End Branch

1895 view of the West End Branch. (BMO Corporate Archives)

This Richardsonian Romanesque design with Chateauesque details is being renovated into condos today, but it was built as the Bank of Montreal’s West End Branch in 1889 by Scottish architect Andrew Thomas Taylor. When completed, BMO became the first bank to have two branches in one city (the other was their Main Branch in Old Montreal). The facade’s polychrome masonry includes Scottish sandstone.

An addition to the rear of the bank was completed before 1901, which added two bays only two stories in height (compared to the original building’s three stories). The branch was used by many wealthy businessmen of the time, including Henry Birks.

1931 view of the interior, which is ostensibly all gone today. (BMO Corporate Archives)

BMO sold the building in 1982, and it has experienced heavy turnover of tenants since. It seems to have been most recently acquired by the builders of the condos next door, which is advertised rather garishly across the entire facade.

Recent alterations include a metal roof and an extension of two more floors on top of the pre-1901 addition. The polychromatic arches here are almost Ruskinian and pretty unusual for a Richardsonian-inspired design.

North facade:

Lots of subtle ornamental details here:

The arches’ springers have natural carvings, and the rectangular windows above are surrounded by colonnettes. Their carved crossing effect is very interesting.

The nearby buildings are of a similar stature but heavily altered.