a blog entry and a couple of pics of the undressing of the St. James United Church in Montreal. I used to go in the stores there a lot – BMac was located there – and I was always fascinated by the church with the stores out front. I can’t wait to see how the removal of the tacky retail space changes the ‘hood.
Michael Boyle's weblog
Steve says
I think it’s a mistake to remove the storefronts from St. James. When I visited and then moved to Montreal I was always impressed that church and commerce could co-exist like that; in a way I’d never seen in any other city.
Soon, it will be just another (beautiful) church.
blork says
Steve, you can see plenty of church-commerce coexistence by going to the mall under the cathedral at Ste-Catherine and University. The church was propped up on stilts around 1988 and the whole underneath scraped out and replaced by the mall, which (as far as I know) the church owns.