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Emperor Wang
    
location:
On an island, in a river
Fetish? What fetish?
 |  | 10th World Congress on Art Deco
< on 1/8/2009 5:04 AM >
|  | | | Art deco lectures and tours galore, in Montreal, May 24-30, 2009. Details here and ici.
What caught my eye was the tour of the Eaton's 9th floor restaurant. Should be interesting to see how it's holding up ten years after the store closed.
Picture swiped from Colin Rose's exhaustive Montreal Art Deco flickr set.
It's great to be alive! |
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Mystic
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
| |  |  | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 1 on 1/8/2009 5:06 AM >
| | | | This sounds pretty interesting. It's too bad that places like Bens aren't around any longer.
But this will be great to see a place that's been locked up for so many years. I wonder if they've been maintaining this room or just left it mothballed for 10 years.
[i] "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." [/i] |
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Emperor Wang
location:
On an island, in a river
Fetish? What fetish?
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 2 on 1/8/2009 5:30 AM >
| | | | From the architecture section of the Eaton's wiki:
After being closed for several years following Eaton's bankruptcy, the famous 9th floor restaurant in the downtown Montreal store was recently restored by Fournier, Gersovitz, Moss et associés, a Montreal architectural firm. It is protected as a registered historical site, because of its rich Art deco design.
This is the first I've heard of any such renovation though.
It's great to be alive! |
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Ratsters
 
location:
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Gender: Male
| | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 3 on 1/8/2009 2:09 PM >
| | | | C'est peut-être une très bonne occasion de re-découvrir notre ville d'il y a quelques années. Merci pour l'info.
"Never, never, never give up!" Winston Churchill |
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Finder
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
Le légendaire 1280 de Montréal (1953-1994)
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 4 on 1/8/2009 3:33 PM >
| | | | That's news to me, too. Man, I miss Eaton's chicken pot pie...was so tasty. 
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Phobos
location:
Montréal
Gender: Male
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 5 on 1/8/2009 4:05 PM >
| | | | Posted by Emperor Wang
From the architecture section of the Eaton's wiki:
After being closed for several years following Eaton's bankruptcy, the famous 9th floor restaurant in the downtown Montreal store was recently restored by Fournier, Gersovitz, Moss et associés, a Montreal architectural firm. It is protected as a registered historical site, because of its rich Art deco design.
This is the first I've heard of any such renovation though.
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Quand je travaillais au complexe les ailes (si ma mémoire est bonne c'était en 2003 ou 2004). Le projet de rénovation était déjà dans les parages...
Et si ils le font visité c'est clairement parcequ'ils est rénover sinon jamais ils laisseraient entrer du monde la. (surtout pas avec des caméras  )
[last edit 1/8/2009 4:06 PM by Phobos - edited 1 times]
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maZe
 
location:
Montreal/Moncton/Ottawa
Gender: Female
"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed" - Sean O'Casey
| |  | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 6 on 1/8/2009 10:18 PM >
| | | | Posted by Emperor Wang
From the architecture section of the Eaton's wiki:
After being closed for several years following Eaton's bankruptcy, the famous 9th floor restaurant in the downtown Montreal store was recently restored by Fournier, Gersovitz, Moss et associés, a Montreal architectural firm. It is protected as a registered historical site, because of its rich Art deco design.
This is the first I've heard of any such renovation though.
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Really? I know I've mentioned it a number of times on here... Should open next summer.
[last edit 1/8/2009 10:18 PM by maZe - edited 1 times]
Mechfreak57 in the UER chat : "George W. Bush is not perfect. He fucked up the borders and Irak is a shit storm but he's the best we've got. "
Save the world - adopt an American! |
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Mystic
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 7 on 1/9/2009 1:44 AM >
| | | | They mentioned in the wiki that they were going to renovate it to today's safety standards. I hope that doesn't mean that they're going to start tearing up the place and use modern day patchups. It would be a shame to lose anything that was original to this place. In the photo though it appears that there are sprinklers, so I'm sure it must have atleast some safety systems installed.
Does anyone know if they kept atleast one of the original manual elevators? I remember back with Eaton's they had about 6 all manual, then they "upgraded" them to modern automatic elevators one by one, but kept one manual express elevator. I would think that would have been historic to the building too, but I doubt it's still there...
[i] "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." [/i] |
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nostra-YOUPPI!
Umpire
location:
Shahre:'on Kaybec
Bonsoir et cest partie
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 8 on 1/9/2009 3:30 AM >
| | | | i have loads of blueprints of eatons i found in a trashcan the week i worked in the kitchen of le 9. eatons "as built" had 14 elevators, 7 east 7 west. the 7 west elevators were removed (no clue when) but the elevator door openings were visible on most floors. the east elevators had 4 upgraded to automatic by otis and 3 manual remained right up until the end. the manual elevators were mostly used for after hours functions in le 9.
eatons always had sprinklers, they were some of the oldest sprinklers i ever saw actually. for me the coolest floor was the 8th, the floor renovations forgot. it was closed between 97 and 98 along with 7. they were both re opened for a liquidation center in the last year of the store. the front escalator towers only went to 8. the rear escalator towers went to 9. the area on 9 behind the kitchen was "employee only" as were the escalators to 9. the rear portion of 9 was at one time open to the public with sales space and an employee cafeteria. the cafeteria was used for storage and the sales space was office space until 98 when eatons tried to re use the space as an exhibit hall. they gutted the area and even sold the kitchen equipment from the caf at auction.
the front escalator tower was interesting in the fact the up escalators were about 40 feet away from the down escalators, they werent in the traditional double stairwell configuration. the "new" tower was interesting in the fact that the escalators from 1-4 were glass sided and from 4 to 8 were regular closed sided ones. One thing i remember that was interesting in the building was when they were pulling cat5 cable on 6 in 1998 i wondered how they would do it without wrecking the plaster ceilings. the flourescent light fixtures had removeable access panels to allow for access to the above ceiling area.
I must have explored this building 20 times, it was very interesting because for the most part it was all built at once. 8 and 9 were added later, and then they added the art deco arse end to the store, the entire building was 9 floors and it was an extra wide block between victoria and university.
one thing i have always wondered, at the BAY on 5 you have the toy department in that area at the top of the marble staircase. I have the feeling in the buildings former incarnation as morgans this was a restaurant, on the roof above this there is a domed roof. and if you notice the ceiling of the toy department is considerably higher than the rest of 5.
the bay is basically 3 buildings, all added and renovated peicemeal. you have the front 4 story section built on stone from the former parliament buildings. then you have the 8 story main body that is only 6 stories in the area of the toy department giving 7 and 8 thier distinctive p shape. you then have the arse end that was built at the same time morgans built the parkade. its awfully ugly and doesnt compliment the original building in the least. there is also the cool tunnel under aylmer street that leads to the bay loading dock.
simpsons was another interesting building, the smallest of the big 3. it was also the most modern. it was completely renovated in the mid 80s only to be closed in 1989 and turned into the bays liquidation center for a few years. simpsons was also doubled in size at one point in its history. the renovation to turn it into simons and the paramount completely destroyed every vestige of simpsons. one of the only visible things from simpsons inside is the mezzanine at the back of 1 that simpsons had. on the west side of simpsons they had 4 elevator shafts, still visible from the mansfield side of the building. on the rear of the building there used to be an elevator penthouse that said "simpsons" that was for the freight elevators. simpsons also had huge indoor loading docks off the alley between simpsons and the big parking lot, there were 4-5 large loading doors where trucks could be loaded indoors.
now ogilvys, the littlest of them all has managed to stand strong by reinventing itself multiple times, finally as a high end collection of boutiques. Im happy to say i grew up in a time to see all the big department stores and even work in 2 of them. sadly i never got to see dupuis et freres, i would have loved seeing that one. Thats enough of our history lesson for tonight
[last edit 1/10/2009 3:42 PM by nostra-YOUPPI! - edited 1 times]
Montreal Expos 1969-2004 Forever Proud Lets Keep The Dream Alive |
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Mystic
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 9 on 1/9/2009 3:40 AM >
| | | | Wow, that's really some amazing history of Montreal's department stores. It's a shame that there really is nothing left original from any of these department stores. I remember while growing up we used to shop all the time at all of these stores, including Eaton's huge train set they had setup on the 5th floor toy department.
I also remember that strange escalator for employees only that lead to the 9th floor with the yellow glass and swinging doors to the escalator. And in the later years they moved the liquidation centre from the 8th floor up to the 9th floor and they put in some sort of car exposition on the 8th floor. Not sure how they managed that, but at the end it looked like a parking garage with everything dark. I think I remember reading that when Eaton's went bankrupt, the owners of the cars had trouble getting them out of the building. My question is, how did they get them in the building in the first place. Crane?
From the latest photos I've seen of explorations to Eaton's, they seem to have left most of the 9th floor intact, from the wood flooring outside the restaurant and the washrooms. I'm not sure how they've survived over the years though.
[i] "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." [/i] |
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Finder
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
Le légendaire 1280 de Montréal (1953-1994)
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 10 on 1/9/2009 4:06 AM >
| | | | Getting the cars actually into the building, I don't know. But the place did have a few big-ass freight elevators. I ate at the 9th floor a few times in 1999 during its last year and just one of the manual elevators was in use as an express from metro-main floor-9th. The 5th floor was a favorite in the early 80s when I was little. The guys from UEM did a photo tour 5-6 years ago and the 9th was showing evidence of neglect, but I remained optimistic. But since the kitchen is now gone, I guess it will never serve as a restaurant again...unless the developers have a surprise in store?
Speaking of that tour in May, I assume more info will become available to register for tours, etc?
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Mystic
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 11 on 1/9/2009 6:10 AM >
| | | | I read that you register in Toronto and it's a weeklong tour, but I'm assuming there's a way just to sign up for this visit, and perhaps a few other Montreal buildings. If the 9th can't be explored underground style, then let's hope they'll allow everyone to bring in their cameras for this unveiling!
[i] "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." [/i] |
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Emperor Wang
location:
On an island, in a river
Fetish? What fetish?
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 12 on 1/9/2009 5:38 PM >
| | | | Crap! I posted too soon.
After clicking around the Art Deco Montreal site some more I discovered the Congress is a $980 (!) package deal with plenty of fancy meals and socializing. It seems they're going after the "what to do after wintering in Miami Beach" crowd with this.
Detailed information is available from the links at the top-right of these pages. Notice that the french page doesn't have all the content.
E: http://artdecomontreal.com/congress/en/
F: http://artdecomontreal.com/congres/fr/
I emailed asking whether I could sign up just for the 9th Floor tour and the answer wasn't clear at all.
| Eaton's 9th still remains closed to the general public because the facility is not up to building code standards. We were hoping to be able to take tours of it with small numbers but we are still negotiating with the owners. |
If you're interested in attending specific parts of the Congress, let them know by writing info@artdecomontreal.com If enough people express an interest maybe a tour could be arranged just for us?
It's great to be alive! |
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Phobos
location:
Montréal
Gender: Male
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 13 on 1/9/2009 9:07 PM >
| | | | Posted by Mystic
Wow, that's really some amazing history of Montreal's department stores. It's a shame that there really is nothing left original from any of these department stores. I remember while growing up we used to shop all the time at all of these stores, including Eaton's huge train set they had setup on the 5th floor toy department.
I also remember that strange escalator for employees only that lead to the 9th floor with the yellow glass and swinging doors to the escalator. And in the later years they moved the liquidation centre from the 8th floor up to the 9th floor and they put in some sort of car exposition on the 8th floor. Not sure how they managed that, but at the end it looked like a parking garage with everything dark. I think I remember reading that when Eaton's went bankrupt, the owners of the cars had trouble getting them out of the building. My question is, how did they get them in the building in the first place. Crane?
From the latest photos I've seen of explorations to Eaton's, they seem to have left most of the 9th floor intact, from the wood flooring outside the restaurant and the washrooms. I'm not sure how they've survived over the years though.
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Pour ce qui est des voitures, ils y a un monte charge qui doit faire au moin 15 pied de largeur par 10 pieds de profond (je les jamais mesurer avec un tape j'y vais de mémoire). Ce qui est surement arriver c'est qu'ils on rentré les voitures et éventuellement construit de nouvelles salles, corridors ou autre et la les voitures étaient pris au pièges.
Dans le temps ou j'ai travailler la ont avait monté une Golf Gti. Ca fait spécial prendre l'asenceur avec une voiture
Pour ce qui est des ascenseurs, je n'es malheureusement pas tout lu/compris le message de Nostra-Youppi (un peu de difficulté avec mon anglais) mais, non il ne reste plus aucune ascenseur manuel. Comme Nostra-Youppi à dit ils avaient déjà été pour la plus par rénover par OTIS et quand Ivanohé Cambridge la repris tous les ascenseurs on été refait pas KONÉ (et quelques une condamnées)
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Charlie_Dunver
location:
Montreal
Gender: Male
| | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 14 on 1/10/2009 6:02 AM >
| | | | It is nice to see the occasional happy ending but do keep in mind that by and large we just continue tearing down places like Ben's...
Hey, Mystic,
Do you remember the Trainatorium?
CD
http://neath.wordpress.com |
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nostra-YOUPPI!
Umpire
location:
Shahre:'on Kaybec
Bonsoir et cest partie
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 15 on 1/10/2009 3:41 PM >
| | | | mystic is 2 years my junior, and i just vaguely remember the trainatorium.
Montreal Expos 1969-2004 Forever Proud Lets Keep The Dream Alive |
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Mystic
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 16 on 1/10/2009 7:09 PM >
| | | | Posted by Charlie_Dunver
Hey, Mystic,
Do you remember the Trainatorium?
CD
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I used to make my family spend hours on that floor just to let me watch the trains go around the tracks. I got to use it once though. The white door on the other side was left unlocked and a family of oriental tourists made their way in, and I wasn't going to miss that opportunity, so I followed them in and grabbed a control and started shunting the trains around until a manager and a few employees came running and threw them out and I snuck around them and left, but it was the best 5 minutes I think I've ever spent there!
I'm trying to google this, or check on the wiki, but nothing mentions this at all. It's a shame because it was such an iconic piece of work and took up quite a bit of floor space, and almost everyone that walked by had to stop and watch it for atleast a few minutes.
I imagine before they closed down for good, they dismantled it and did away with all the trains, but I sure hope that someone was able to keep some sort of souvenir, maybe even a photo, it would bring back some good memories for sure!
[i] "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." [/i] |
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SPEK Photo
location:
Where you were not.
"Chere cachère!"
| | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 17 on 1/11/2009 2:04 AM >
| | | | 5th floor on the left when going to the toy dept from the mechanical stairs, in front of the cash.
Pour fins d'archives.
WWW.EXPLORATIONURBAINE.CA |
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Mystic
location:
Montreal, QC
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 18 on 1/11/2009 5:02 AM >
| | | | Posted by SPEK Photo
5th floor on the left when going to the toy dept from the mechanical stairs, in front of the cash.
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In later years they kept shrinking the toy department. But I can remember a white wall with glass viewing windows around the train set.
I wonder how much of the original store is left, besides the 9th floor. From the floors that the public can see you can see offices up there, I wonder if they just added office chairs and called it a day.
And what happened to the top floor of Les Ailes, with the Karaoke room and such. I can remember when it first opened they had the similar washroom signs that used to be there.
That's another story though. I'll always remember those swinging wooden doors in the washrooms and the push button toilets that I was always afraid of being sucked down into!
[i] "I reject your reality, and substitute my own." [/i] |
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Phobos
location:
Montréal
Gender: Male
| | Re: 10th World Congress on Art Deco
<Reply # 19 on 1/11/2009 1:52 PM >
| | | | A partir du 5 ieme. Il ne reste rien de ce qu'était le magasin... Ils ont fait un atrium et tout le reste est renover pour ressembler à n'importe qu'elle autre tour à bureau du centre-ville. La seul étage ou l'on peut entrevoir une ressemblance avec le passer c'est au 10 ième (l'étage mécanique) car, il n'y a pas de Gyproc. Le 10 ième ressemble un peut à une maison ''split level'' et si mes souvenirs son bon certain de c'est mini étage avait encore leur plancher en latte de bois.
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