Art & Architecture

This station, built in tunnel, has a clear and sober decorating scheme in the same terra cotta brick as Bonaventure, designed by the same architect. The benches are integrated into the curve of the walls.

The wall cladding at platform level includes the station’s first artwork: 32 seams of moulded aluminum, created by sculptor Charles Daudelin, one of the few artworks integrated directly into the architecture of an original-network station. These dark grey seams, decorated with projecting cubical and rectangular shapes, break up the expanses of brick, lending rhythm and interest to the walls.

The crossover above the tracks in the station’s original transept has thick, solid parapets, and is topped with a high vault in the ceiling. The transept leads to a curved hallway at the foot of the station’s original stairwell, in which recessed wall lights and ceiling light fixtures add a sense of modernist drama.

This used to be the only access to the station, and was quite insufficient to its traffic levels. The problem was unfortunately exacerbated by the Réno-Métro 1999-2000 renovations, which moved the ticket booth and gateline down to the transept, resulting in a cramped and overcrowded space. The need to add elevators provided an opportunity to address these problems, and the project was expanded into a lengthy and extensive rebuild of the station’s accesses between 2018 and 2022.

The elevators, along with new fixed staircases to the platforms, were installed in a new access block at the northern end of the station, supplementing the existing access and providing a unique case of a single entrance leading to two different vertical accesses to the same station. The headhouse, which had been rebuilt in 1999-2000, was once again demolished and replaced, nearly tripling in area,² to accommodate both the original stairwell and the new access shaft in the northeast corner, as well as hosting the ticket hall once more.

The new headhouse is almost entirely glazed and provided with a green roof. Within its glass walls, it is mostly clad in pale concrete and white beams, adding to its luminous nature. Unusually, it has two separate gatelines: the main one, serving the main entrance at the front of the headhouse, and a smaller unstaffed one serving the rear doors at the southeast corner.

In the new access block, the stairwell and elevator shaft directly below the headhouse descend to the Côte-Vertu platform. From a landing partway down, an enclosed tunnel crosses above the trainroom and leads to another volume containing a staircase and elevator to the Montmorency platform. Both shafts are wide, lofty volumes that eliminate the cramped feeling of before. However, the entrances onto the platforms themselves are unusually narrow, and the platforms are also narrower at this point as the platform walls have been thickened, both probably due to structural constraints.

The shaft down to the Côte-Vertu platform is largely clad in slate grey tiles. The tunnel over the trainroom reproduces the station’s original brown terracotta bricks. The shaft to the Montmorency platform, though, is particularly striking. A large panel of square mosaic tiled patterns in shades of blue connects the 1960s ceramic finishes of some original network stations with the digital age, suggesting a pattern of pixels. More unusual still are the concrete walls textured with hemlock wood grain, suggesting the clapboard houses of the Plateau’s working-class history. This texture is also used on part of the headhouse ceiling.

The rebuilt headhouse features a new artwork, Je reviens chez nous by Simon Bilodeau. The greyscale mural in polymer concrete covers three walls at the rear of the headhouse: one above the original stairwell, one facing the main gateline, and one alongside the secondary gateline at the rear. The work recalls the nature and history connecting the surrounding Plateau neighbourhood with Mount Royal: amid a background suggesting the bedrock under the Plateau, the designs feature maps of the mountain and the neighbourhood, animals and plants from the mountain, and tools and other items suggesting the area’s social history. A final section by the rear window represents Montreal’s famous spiral staircases. The headhouse’s glass walls are specially arranged to ensure the work can be seen from outside.

Another work of art is located outside the station. The 1999-2000 renovations (like the more recent ones) reworked the public square around the headhouse, which was then renamed Place Gérald-Godin after a poet and politician who had represented the area in the National Assembly. Les Industries Perdues created the mural Tango de Montréal on a wall overlooking the station, reproducing Godin’s poem by that title and honouring the diverse, working-class users of the metro.