Who are you?
I am Edward Houle, intern architect and architectural historian working in conservation. I have been a volunteer guide with Heritage Montreal since 2015.
Your stop
For my all-time favourite stop (so far), I have selected Montreal Station 39 for its unexpected location, its refined, subtly unusual design, and its admirable architect, Joseph Venne.
Discovering Longue-Pointe
The southwest sector of Mercier’s Longue-Pointe neighbourhood is characterized by quiet streets lined with mature trees, single-family houses, duplexes and triplexes, and the occasional shop, all only a few blocks away from districts of factories and warehouses. A few institutional buildings contribute to the area’s architectural identity, such as the monumental parish church and three-storey school, both named Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, that face each-other across a park. A few blocks away on an otherwise unprepossessing street corner, a remarkably handsome fire station, Caserne 39 (2915 Monsabré Street), also graces the neighbourhood.
Caserne 39: Function and dignity
Caserne 39 consists of a main two-storey building at the street corner containing three garages and related facilities, and a tall tower located to the rear of the main building. (Fire station towers not only contributed to the scale and visibility of their fire stations, but they also often served for hanging long fire hoses to dry. In the more distant past, these towers were used as lookouts to watch for the outbreak of fires.) The tower has mostly opaque walls rising up to tall arched windows under a hip roof and chimney.
The main building’s proportions are comparatively horizontal: the symmetrical front façade has a trio of garage door openings with broad segmental arches, a row of rectangular windows above, and an overall flat roofline broken only by a large coat of arms; on the side façades, strong band coursing complements the picturesquely arranged windows.
The dominant material is brick, in subtly nuanced shades of buff-brown woven into a variety of richly textured patterns. Smooth buff-coloured stone is found at details such as coursing, window sills, quoins, arches. The same stone is used at the main façade’s coat of arms, a large relief carving presenting an earlier version of Montreal’s emblem. The window frames and sashes are painted a soft yellow, and the façades rest on a base of light grey granite.
This fire station is sophisticated and strikingly distinguished, yet it does not overwhelm its neighbours. As the functional home for a vital public service, its appearance, little altered since its construction, is at once robust and dignified.
An (eventual) benefit of Montreal’s annexation
Caserne 39 was built in 1914, at a time of change to this district’s municipal status and considerable improvement to the local infrastructure. In 1910, Longue-Pointe, Beaurivage and Tétraultville—adjacent municipalities undergoing rapid residential and industrial development—were annexed by the City of Montreal; today, these former towns make up much of eastern Mercier.
A year after annexation, local residents complained to the City of the persistently poor state of their district’s public infrastructure. Not only were these neighbourhoods still awaiting sidewalks and a municipal water supply—and users of the local school still had to make do with outdoor latrines—but the firefighting capacity also left much to be desired: when a fire broke out at a local business, buckets were all that was available to help put it out. The City addressed these concerns soon after, and between 1913 and 1915, three fire stations were built in Mercier, including Caserne 39. If this fire station marked progress in the quality of local services a century ago, it also represented the neighbourhood’s then-recent integration with the City of Montreal, as most clearly proclaimed by the municipal coat of arms crowning the main building.
Joseph Venne, a prolific architect and inventive designer
The architectural talents of Joseph Venne, Caserne 39’s architect, were brought to this civic improvement. Venne began his architectural career with Maurice Perrault and Albert Mesnard, who made him partner by 1890. He later founded a series of other offices. Over his career, Venne received many commissions from the Catholic Church, but also civic organizations (such as the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste), commercial institutions and, of course, the City of Montreal. All the while, Joseph Venne contributed to his field in several ways: he belonged to the team of specialists that wrote the City of Montreal’s first building code; he collaborated on one of the first studies of Canadian historical architecture; he taught Montreal’s first publicly available course in architectural construction and history; he was a founding member (in 1890) and later president of Quebec’s first professional architectural association; and he was a founding board member of the body that would become the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
This well-rounded architect was also a skilled and inventive designer. Venne often employed deeply sculpted elements, and his building’s profiles and ornamental patterns could be particularly distinctive. He followed the historical fashions of his time, but Venne tended to mix different aesthetics in an original manner that has made his work difficult for architectural historians to label stylistically. Caserne 39, for instance, displays elements of the Italianate Style, especially at its tower, while the beautifully executed brown brick masonry may have been influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement.
The fire station’s design may also have drawn from American architects; its massiveness vaguely recalls the work of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86) Henry Hobson Richardson , and even the modern architecture of Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) may have inspired features of this building, such as the repetitive door and window openings. Whatever the sources of Venne’s fire hall design, he combined them with his own sure-handed touch.
Architecture for all
Joseph Venne argued that fine architecture was not only for the wealthy, but that it could be enjoyed by everyone. For him, architectural quality depended more on thoughtful and expressive design than magnificence and extravagant materials. At Caserne 39, Venne brought this ethic to a young working-class neighbourhood; his functional municipal building is elevated by its vigorous civic presence.
