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Totally, and that looks like a great guide to Montreal. Saw this on Amazon – probably some overlap... Amazing the amount of effort put into even functional buildings.
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Art Deco Architecture Across Canada is well worth a purchase for anyone interested. It genuinely does a really good job covering the subject. Most of the focus is on the larger pre-Second World War industrial centres, so like Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, but it has stuff from coast to coast including some real obscure ones located in the middle of nowhere. The only downside about it I can think of is that it can be a bit lite with the histories of some buildings, but that’s to be expected for a book trying to cover such a wide spanning topic.
As for this thread, here’s one from Edmonton, our old Hudson’s Bay Co. Department Store:
It's a bit more Moderne than flamboyant Deco, but as one of the very few pieces of monumental interwar architecture in the city, it fits. The main section of it, fronting Jasper Avenue, was designed by Winnipeg architectural firm Moody & Moore and was built between 1938 and 1939. Following the addition of a third floor and matching annex in 1949 and 1954 respectively, it became one of the largest departmental store buildings in Canada by square footage. Sadly, the Bay left it in 1995. Since then, the building’s undergone a massive renovation and is now known as “Enterprise Square,” which houses the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension. The original lower section of the building is a protected Municipal Historic Resource — the later upper floor, with the exception of its corner windows, was completely overhauled in the renovations (see the grey section in the pic above).
Most of the former store’s detailing is restricted to the use of glass block, speedlines, chamfered corners bearing the Company’s coats of arms, and six unique reliefs depicting elements of the city’s story. The reliefs include: an Indigenous buffalo hunt; a York Boat; a western Canadian settler; a trapper; the boat
Nonsuch; and a Red River cart. I always thought the one below looked a bit like Harrison Ford…
And one of the corner reliefs: