On the morning we left Montreal, I looked out the hotel window and saw this! I think it is just beautiful - clearly something from out of the past. I did a little searching after I got home, and discovered that it was built in 1930 and sits on top of the Guaranteed Pure Milk Building on Lucien L'Allier Street, with the modern Cité du commerce électronique skyscraper behind it - a wonderful contrast. The building is vacant, and no one is quite sure what to do with this. A professor at a university in Montreal has said: "Some signs, like the milk bottle, have a cultural resonance that goes beyond their commercial function." To me it is a wonderful work of art. There is talk of painting it, and to my mind, that would remove something important that resonates within me. I uploaded a large file on this, so please click on it to see much more detail.
looks like people have already been painting it. :) and i agree, a wonderful contrast of the old and the new.
ReplyDeleteThe bottle belongs in a museum or park, with a nice bronze plaque or picture display to record its history in the city. If I lived there, I wouldn't want it, or the boring building it's rooted on top of, disrupting the skyline. There are plenty of reasons to save old buildings with wonderful architecture that keep the eyes riveted. But this is not one of them. Now that the bottle and the building have been recorded by a noted photographer, they can both be taken down and replaced with a new building with cleaner lines or, better yet, a park for city workers, dwellers & visitors.
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