1915 – Bank of Toronto Building, Rue Saint-Jacques, Montreal, Canada
Built to replace the previous bank of 1893 by Taylor & Gordon, which was demolished in 1914. Demolished.
The main ideas in carrying out this building were to get the maximum amount of floor space for the banking room, and to carry out the whole in a substantial and pleasing manner without going in at all for elaborate and expensive ornamentation.
The building covers the whole of the property, with a frontage of ninety feet on St. James Street and sixty-two feet on McGill Street, and rises to ten storeys, the full height allowed by Montreal building by-laws. The base course is of plain polished granite to the line of the banking room window sills. From this line, up to the top of the cornice, is carried out in white glazed terra cotta.
The first storey shows a complete Doric order with large circular headed windows, this fairly elaborate detail marking the banking room.
Above the ground floor the walls are carried up in plain block courses with a small amount of ornamentation on the first floor windows and small projecting balconies on the seventh floor. The top floor has flat ornamentation between the windows, and the whole is crowned by an elaborate Corinthian cornice. This treatment gives a dignified and substantial building without any appearance of elaboration.
The two party walls a r e faced with buff brick above the adjoining buildings with the name “Bank of Toronto” in large five foot letters in green glazed brick, which although visible for a long distance, is not too striking. There is only one entrance to the building, next the party wall on the St. James Street front; by this arrangement the whole ground floor, except the entrance hall, elevator hall and stairs, is devoted to the banking room.
Construction, February 1917
Published March 8, 2026
