August 2025.
The Sun Life Building is a Tower of Babel-like heap of classical ornamentation that simultaneously uses Art Deco setbacks while having more anachronistic columns and cornices. I do think the design is interesting, but it’s an odd hybrid of two styles. It has a very long history and held some interesting distinctions upon completion.
The Sun Life Building is located at 1155 Rue Metcalfe in downtown Montreal, Quebec. It is bordered by Rue Mansfield and the BDC Building to the north, Rue Metcalfe and Dorchester Square to the south, Boulevard Rene-Levesque and Mary, Queen of the World to the east, and a parking garage to the west.
History
Historic photo of the old Sun Life Building in Old Montreal. (Sun Life Building website)
The Sun Life Building was built for the Sun Life Assurance Company, which was founded by Montreal businessman Mathew Hamilton Gault in 1865. Their first head office building, at the corner of Rue Notre-Dame and Rue Saint-Alexis in Old Montreal, dates to 1891. (I write about it in more detail in my first Rue Notre-Dame dump article.) However, as the agency grew, chairman Robertson Macaulay picked a site near Dorchester Square for a new, larger building.
The former YMCA Building, a Richardsonian Romanesque building dating to the 1880s or 1890s, which was demolished for the Sun Life Building’s construction. (lost.canada on Instagram)
The first phase of the existing Sun Life Building was designed by Toronto architects Darling, Pearson, & Cleveland in the Beaux-Arts style. The building replaced the older YMCA Building on the site, which contained a swimming pool and concert hall.
The original design for the Sun Life Building upon completion. Note the presence of Knox Presbyterian to the north. (Sun Life Building website)
The Sun Life Building’s cornerstone was laid on May 13, 1914. The first phase was completed in 1918 and stood six stories high, accommodating 750 employees. An interesting aspect of the design is that it appears to have been intended for expansion--note how the square corner of the building (where the pilasters and columns end) is not repeated on the side nearest the church. Considering Beaux-Arts architecture’s propensity for symmetry, it was almost certainly intended that the Sun Life Building would be extended northward to Rue Mansfield.
The Sun Life Building’s first addition under construction. (Sun Life Building website)
The second phase of the Sun Life Building expanded its footprint northwards towards Rue Mansfield. It was completed in 1926 and enabled 1,300 employees to work inside. In order to build the addition, Knox Presbyterian Church, formerly on the site, was demolished.
Steel frame of the tower undergoing construction. (Sun Life Building website)
The third addition to the Sun Life Building brought it to its current footprint and was also designed by Darling, Pearson, & Cleveland, though this time A. J. C. Paine was added as an associated architect. This portion used Beebe granite. Along with the central 26-story tower, the original building was expanded by three stories, and a matching addition was built on the west side. This work was completed in 1933. Upon completion, it was the largest building by square footage in the British Empire, with approximately one million square feet of usable space. The Sun Life Building’s website states it was also the tallest building in Montreal upon completion, which appears to be correct, as it stands one meter higher than the Royal Bank Tower (the previous record holder).
Historic photo of the building’s bowling alleys. (Sun Life Building website)
At this point in time, the building had a shooting range, bowling alley, health clinic, gymnasium, auditorium, billiard rooms, and a cafeteria that occupied the entire sixth floor. Its manual elevators were operated by “elevator boys” (later women following WWII), a tradition that continued until 1969.
One of the bank vaults. (Wikimedia)
During World War II, the British government stored its gold reserves in the building’s subterranean vaults, in a project known as “Operation Fish.” They packed the gold into crates labeled “FISH” and shipped them to Canada. The $5 billion fortune was guarded by police 24 hours a day. Apparently, the operation was a success, as the reserves were entirely intact and no information was leaked. The vaults themselves have since been removed.
The Sun Life Building has been extensively restored and modernized over the years, most notably a $150 million project from 1986-1999. This included three phases--systems upgrades, window and elevator replacements, and modern finishes. The interior today is a mixture of contemporary and historic features.
Photos
Unfortunately, I didn’t do the greatest job covering this building. I don’t have an “overall” shot I’m happy with, and I didn’t get too many detail shots. I’ll do my best with what I have:
The various setbacks across the Sun Life Building are a more Art Deco massing cue, and it stems from Montreal’s legislation on tall buildings at the time requiring setbacks to preserve sunlight access for the streets. However, the classical ornamentation used across the building, such as its stone materiality and columns, are more anachronistic Beaux-Arts features. The end result is a hybrid of the last holdouts of classical revival architecture with more futuristic early Modern design.
The east facade, taken from the steps of Mary, Queen of the World:
The base is dominated by four-story Corinthian pilasters, which support an exaggerated entablature (a fifth floor and windows take up the entire frieze) with a cornice above. The balustrade marks the original height of this building. The only other ornamentation includes the pedimented windows and spandrels.
A different angle of the various setbacks here:
The setbacks above, which date to the 1933 addition:
The doubled Doric columns in the middle form an open colonnade, which appears to be an observation deck. The floors above have doubled Ionic columns, though the space behind them is enclosed. It’s interesting that the doubled columns are only included here and not on the original building.
A better look at the crown, which features anthemia along the top and several flags:
The main shaft is articulated similarly, but features fewer setbacks:
This is the principal facade facing Rue Metcalfe, so its more frontal nature was probably intentional. One criticism that I have of the Sun Life Building is its various horizontal divisions, such as the cornices and colonnades across different floors, actually make the building appear stouter and reduce its vertical emphasis. Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School had fixed this issue of early skyscrapers in the 1890s, but it was not until Art Deco architecture that skyscrapers more broadly expressed their vertical nature through their design.
Another view:
My “Tower of Babel” blurb at the beginning also refers to this building’s expression as a bunch of cobbled-together modules of classical architecture, rather than one coherent and unified object. I think this is at least partially a result of the Sun Life Building being constructed across multiple phases, though.
Last stop--the colossal 4-story columns in front of the entrance:
The classical ornamentation definitely does a lot for monumentality here, as the scale is huge compared to the human figure.
Sources:
https://www.sunlifebuilding.ca/history/
https://qahn.org/article/sun-life-largest-building-british-empire-built-beebe-granite
No comments:
Post a Comment