The Other Downtown

The Other Downtown

When Place Ville-Marie, the cruciform skyscraper designed by I. M. Pei, opened in the heart of downtown in 1962, the tallest structure of the time also signaled the beginning of Montréal's subterranean city. Montrealers were skeptical that anyone would want to shop or even walk around in the new "down" town, but more than four decades later they can't live without it. About half a million people use the 30-km (19-mi) underground pedestrian network daily. The tunnels link 10 Métro stations, seven hotels, two hundred restaurants, seventeen hundred boutiques, and sixty office buildings -- not to mention movie theaters, concert halls, convention complexes, the Bell Centre, two universities and a college, and subway, commuter rail, and bus stations. Montrealers who live in one of more than 2,000 apartments connected to the Underground City can pop out to buy a liter of milk on a February day and never have to change out of shirtsleeves and house slippers.

Most of the Underground City parallels the Métro lines. The six-block sector of continuous shopping between La Baie (east of the McGill station) and Les Cours Montréal (west of the Peel station) is perhaps the densest portion of the network. Montréal was ahead of the curve in requiring all construction in the Métro system to include an art component, resulting in such dramatic works as Frédéric Back's mural of the history of music in Place-des-Arts and the dramatically swirling stained-glass windows by Marcelle Ferron in Champs-de-Mars. The art nouveau entrance to the Square Victoria station, a gift from the city of Paris, is the only original piece of Hector Guimard's architectural-design work outside the City of Light.