Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
THE MUNICIPAL HEART OF WESTMOUNT: Westmount Public Library, the Conservatory, The Gallery at Victoria Hall, Victoria Hall This walking tour is not physically demanding and does not involve a lot of walking. Part of it is inside. It takes from 1 to 1 ½ hours. Directions are written in italics. Standing by 2 benches facing older park entrance at side of Library The walking tour encompasses a group of municipal buildings which lie on the northwest corner of Westmount Park and form the cultural heart of our community. They are Westmount Public Library, the Conservatory, and Victoria Hall with The Gallery at Victoria Hall. They were designed (and later renovated) by outstanding architects, most of them Westmount residents, and were constructed between 1899 and 1999. They are now linked. Westmount Public Library was the first of these buildings to be constructed. In 1898 the citizens of Westmount resolved to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee of 1897 by building a municipal library in the town’s first park, the newly created Victoria Jubilee Park (now known as Westmount Park). The decision reflected the importance of education and reading to the mainly English and Scottish residents. This was the first municipal library in Quebec. Robert Findlay, a prominent architect living on adjacent Lansdowne Avenue, was chosen to design it. He had designed the headquarters of the Sun Life Assurance Company on Notre Dame Street and the residences of many wealthy Montrealers. Findlay used the Romanesque or Richardsonian style, which is characterised by solid masonry massing, large arches, sloped roofs, big windows, and towers. The American architect Henry Hobson Richardson was responsible for many libraries and public buildings in New England. Findlay’s library was built of warm red brick and sandstone with a slate roof. Its arched entrance faced the park. It had one bay window to the right of the entrance. When it opened in 1899, the building, furniture, and fittings, together with an inventory of 2000 books, cost less than $17,000. The main entrance of this original library features sandstone reliefs by sculptor George Hill who also executed the Georges Etienne Cartier monument on Park Avenue and the Westmount cenotaph. The quotation is from Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. Findlay designed three phases of the library—the initial building, which opened in 1899, the Children’s Library of 1911, and the Reading Room of 1924. The 1924 addition is to the left of this entrance. It features another bay window which adds symmetry to the facade. A reference room and a reading room with a mezzanine were included in this addition. More additions and changes were made over the years by other architects. In 1995, the library underwent a major expansion and restoration to mark its 100th anniversary. The extension to the left was designed by Peter Rose, a Westmount resident at the time, who was responsible for the Maison Alcan on Sherbrooke Street and the design of the addition to the Canadian Centre for Architecture on Baile Street. This Rose Wing replaced the demolished 1959 children’s annex. It was built in materials and colours that complemented the original, but in a modern design. The bay windows with their metal cladding echo the Findlay bays. This new, large addition does not overwhelm the older building. It is tucked in behind it and its flattish roof allows the Findlay roofline to dominate the Library complex. The two upper floors of the Rose Wing contain the reference collection, the stacks, a reading area with a glazed wall, administrative offices, a board room, and two study rooms. The fiction section is housed on the main level and non-fiction and graphic novels are on the second storey. Enter the older Findlay wing and go to the North Reading Room on the right The architecture firm of Gersovitz & Moss was responsible for the interior decoration and furnishing of the Findlay Wing. Columns were uncovered or copied and were marbleized, arches were restored, stencilling was done at the top of the walls, and the coffered ceilings were revealed. The walls were divided as they had been originally, with darker colours on the dado at the base, a filler of wallpaper above, and a frieze band that was either stencilled or highly decorated in the upper section. The leaded glass windows incorporate the names of figures in the arts and sciences. Appropriate oak furniture was designed for the rooms by the firm. This reading room was originally two separate reading rooms for men and women, divided by arches and a double-sided fireplace. The fireplace was demolished in 1967. Go into the 1911 Findlay addition, today’s Westmount Room You are in the original Children’s Library. It was separate from the main building when constructed. It had its own entrance, its own librarian, different hours, and contained child-sized furniture. Its brick, wood-burning fireplace has a stone inscription and tiles of scenes from Alice in Wonderland. There is a framed archival postcard of the way it used to look in the corner. The original entrance door is concealed. This space is now called the Westmount Room and is used for meetings, film screenings, and as a reading room. The Westmount Historical Association’s lecture series is presented here. Take a few minutes to look at the fireplace, the wall treatment, and the framed postcard. Then you will visit the newer Rose wing of the Library. Walk to the staircase going to the lower level Peter Rose designed this passageway or spine running from the new Sherbrooke Street entrance to the rear of the Library, linking the Findlay and Rose wings. If you go up the new staircase just beyond the reference desk, there is a marvellous view of the roofline of the Findlay buildings and the Conservatory. The inner courtyard and greenhouse can be seen through the glazed wall of the reference section. Take the staircase to the lower level The bottom level is reached by an elevator and this wide staircase, which was designed with young children and strollers in mind. It houses the children’s library, the audio visual centre, staff areas, restrooms, and the archives of the Westmount Historical Association. The children’s library has a story room set up for craft work. There is access to the Storytelling Garden which has a low stone wall for sitting and a stone carving of an owl, the symbol of Westmount Library. This space won a top landscaping award, the Prix amenagement 2010 in a competition held by Les Arts en Ville. There are washrooms and water fountains near the staircase. Take the elevator or staircase upstairs and go to rear door of the Westmount Room. On the walls in this passageway are two sets of Findlay drawings of the Library. There is also a model of the library made by architect Peter Rose at the time of the renewal. You are by the short passageway which joins the Conservatory to the Library. Here is the original exterior Children’s Library door. Leave the Library through the new entrance facing Sherbrooke Street and go to the entrance of the Conservatory The forecourt to the Conservatory was planted with linden trees and perennial flowers in 2001. The Westmount Flower Conservatory was opened in 1927. The steel-frame construction, which rests on a masonry base, was manufactured by the company Lord & Burnham in a cascade design. It originally featured a Palm House and an adjacent greenhouse with a fishpond. Modifications were carried out in 1939, 1966 and 1967, and in 1971. The vestibule was not part of the original. In 2004 the architectural firm Beaupré & Michaud was hired to restore the badly deteriorated structure. Inside Conservatory beside bridge A contemporary water basin with a small bridge and waterfall was added in the main building and the floor was redone in slate. The heating system was concealed behind grills and mounted by planters. The pond in the adjacent greenhouse was lined with marble and ceramic mosaics and was surrounded with marble. A bronze fountain replaced one that had been stolen. The Conservatory provides magical views of the Library. Annual bedding plants for city parks are raised in the greenhouses at the rear. The Conservatory is now linked to The Gallery at Victoria Hall. Take a few minutes to wander through the Conservatory, making sure to visit the pond in the greenhouse. Then go through the passageway to The Gallery at Victoria Hall. Inside The Gallery at Victoria Hall You are now in The Gallery at Victoria Hall, an art space completed in 1999. It was designed by the architectural firm Fournier, Gersovitz & Moss to match the adjacent Victoria Hall, using similar materials and neo-Tudor architecture. The same firm had carried out the restoration of Victoria Hall the previous year. The floors here are done in geometric tiles, a treatment often used for similar spaces in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. However, both the floor design and interior ceiling are contemporary in design. The French doors open onto the Conservatory forecourt. The gallery hosts changing exhibitions of the visual arts by Westmount artists, children from the Visual Arts Centre programmes, and city employees. It is also used for occasional lectures and social events. Proceed to Victoria Hall and stand across from its front entrance. You are standing in front of Victoria Hall, Westmount’s community centre. It is the second Victoria Hall to stand on this site. During the Library’s construction in 1899, three hundred residents submitted a petition to city council calling for a building where the community could hold meetings and carry out other activities. Victoria Jubilee Hall was designed by the Library’s architect, Robert Findlay, using a similar style and materials, and cost about $25,000. It was the first municipal auditorium to be built in Canada. This original Victoria Hall housed a public meeting room, a lodge room for the Freemasons, a drill hall, bowling alley, billiard room, gymnasium, and a swimming pool. It was destroyed by fire in 1924. A second community centre was built in 1925, but designed this time by the firm Hutchison& Wood (also local residents) in Credit Valley sandstone with Indiana freestone filler. It was in the neo-Tudor style similar to the recently constructed City Hall. Many Gothic details were included—crenellations, the square tower flanked by four corner turrets, the oriel window jutting out above the ogival doors, and the buttresses of the two gabled side wings. The new community centre responded to the needs of the growing city. The YMCA had been built across the street in 1912, so many of the sports facilities existing in the first structure were no longer needed. There was a large hall with a balcony and stage for dances and performances, a Masonic lodge room upstairs, and many smaller rooms suitable for different activities. For many years, spaces in the building were rented out. The hall hosted extremely popular and well-attended Saturday night dances in the 1930s and 40s with the Johnny Holmes Band, featuring Oscar Peterson. The Willis piano Peterson played is still in the hall. The Lodge Room on the second floor was used by the Masons until the end of the 1990s. The basement level is now joined to Manoir Westmount, a seniors’ residence to the right run by the Rotary Club, and houses its dining room and kitchen. Victoria Hall underwent a renovation and enlargement in 1998, carried out by the firm of Fournier, Gersovitz & Moss. (Both Rosanne Moss and Julia Gersovitz are Westmount residents.) Great care was taken to preserve the historic character of the building and most of the original construction remains. In the Concert Hall, the oak dados and plaster mouldings were restored; in the foyer the black marble plinths were replaced. The building once again serves as a community centre, providing space for municipal courses, concerts, meetings, and many social events. Thus you can see that this corner of Westmount’s first park is home to a group of municipal buildings in a variety of architectural styles. These provide cultural and recreational facilities for the residents. They are now linked, so that in poor weather you can walk through the complex which has elevator and wheelchair access. These buildings face busy Sherbrooke Street, but provide a tranquil haven in an urban setting. WHA research and text prepared originally for 2010 OPAM Walking Tour