1917 – Bibliothèque Municipale, Sherbrooke Street, Montreal

Construction started in October 1914. The interior features a beautiful and large marble-clad hall lit by stained glass skylights bearing the arms of Quebecois historical figures, the French regions of origin of the first settlers, and the other Canadian provinces. Reading rooms on either side of the hall provided well-lit seating areas where patrons could consult materials ordered from the closed stacks at the back of the library. Simpler in design, a five-story book storage tower protruded to the back of the library, fitted with the cast-iron Snead bookshelf system. Accessible through a side entrance, a children’s library was planned underneath the main library, but it only opened in 1941.

In 2005, the library collections moved to the BAnQ Grande Bibliothèque and the former municipal library building, renamed Édifice Gaston Miron, was taken over by the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2009.

“As a rule buildings of this character are built on level grounds, but here the main street (Sherbrooke East), facing the park, is higher by eighteen feet than Montcalm and Beaudry Streets, on which the side and rear of the structure abut. It was necessary for the architect, Mr. Eugene Payette, to adjust the plan to this slope, in addition to conforming with an oblique street line extending across the front.”

“Marble is used extensively throughout the interior, both for floors and walls, with the exception of the reading room, where the floors are of tile with marble border. The exterior walls of the building are of grey Queenston limestone on a light granite base, Stanstead granite being used for the ten columns forming the colonnade, the dimensions of which are three feet in diameter at base and twenty five feet high.”
Construction, November 1917

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