Canada - Old Montreal
The eight storey New York Life Insurance Co. building with a Scottish red sandstone façade. Erected in 1887-1889.
With its metal clock at the top of the tower, the building is considered the first Canadian skyscraper.
Architects: Babb, Cook & Willard.
Very modern for its time (hydraulic elevators, water reservoirs for fire-fighting, electricity), the building recalls Italian palaces of the Renaissance.
The tower’s façade, designed like a monumental clock tower, dominates the architectural composition. This neat vertical expression contrasts with the successive cornices, which reduce the impression of height by dividing the building into four horizontal parts. The varying treatment of the superposed design components creates an impression of massive solidity, rather than highlighting the vertical structure composed of masonry pillars and metal posts.
Despite numerous classical traits, the composition’s freedom produces a picturesque effect, augmented by the façade’s lack of symmetry and a certain stylistic eclecticism. The three sections facing Place d’Armes square and the eight fronting on rue St-Jacques form a rectangular volume that evokes the Italian Renaissance palazzos, with their very pronounced horizontal divisions. The quoins, rusticated masonry, pilasters, capitals, moulding of the lower levels and the crowning balustrade also recall the Italian Renaissance’s mannered fancifulness.
On the other hand, the upper three levels, designed like high arcades, distance themselves from Renaissance-inspired compositions, while the polygonal tower echoes the neo-romantic architecture of Henry H. Richardson. Taken as a whole, Italian Renaissance is the dominant style, following trends then in vogue in New York. It is ultimately an example of restrained eclecticism.
The metal clock at the top of the tower has symbolic representations of the sun and the moon.
Canada - Old Montreal
The eight storey New York Life Insurance Co. building with a Scottish red sandstone façade. Erected in 1887-1889.
With its metal clock at the top of the tower, the building is considered the first Canadian skyscraper.
Architects: Babb, Cook & Willard.
Very modern for its time (hydraulic elevators, water reservoirs for fire-fighting, electricity), the building recalls Italian palaces of the Renaissance.
The tower’s façade, designed like a monumental clock tower, dominates the architectural composition. This neat vertical expression contrasts with the successive cornices, which reduce the impression of height by dividing the building into four horizontal parts. The varying treatment of the superposed design components creates an impression of massive solidity, rather than highlighting the vertical structure composed of masonry pillars and metal posts.
Despite numerous classical traits, the composition’s freedom produces a picturesque effect, augmented by the façade’s lack of symmetry and a certain stylistic eclecticism. The three sections facing Place d’Armes square and the eight fronting on rue St-Jacques form a rectangular volume that evokes the Italian Renaissance palazzos, with their very pronounced horizontal divisions. The quoins, rusticated masonry, pilasters, capitals, moulding of the lower levels and the crowning balustrade also recall the Italian Renaissance’s mannered fancifulness.
On the other hand, the upper three levels, designed like high arcades, distance themselves from Renaissance-inspired compositions, while the polygonal tower echoes the neo-romantic architecture of Henry H. Richardson. Taken as a whole, Italian Renaissance is the dominant style, following trends then in vogue in New York. It is ultimately an example of restrained eclecticism.
The metal clock at the top of the tower has symbolic representations of the sun and the moon.