Saint-Jacques Street and the Bank of Montreal
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Transcript
Saint-Jacques Street became Canada's nineteenth-century financial canyon. Banks, insurers and corporate headquarters clustered here when Montréal was the country's commercial capital.
The Bank of Montreal was founded in 1817 and is Canada's oldest bank. Its monumental headquarters borrowed the language of classical architecture: columns, symmetry and stone suggested permanence and trust.
That image concealed a volatile economy of canal building, railways, commodity booms and periodic crashes.
By the twentieth century, much financial power moved to Toronto and to newer Montréal districts. Saint-Jacques declined, then became heritage.
Cities are full of buildings designed to look eternal. Finance is particularly fond of them. Economic centres often move faster than stone façades do.