While I was an undergraduate at Concordia University 10 years ago, an American friend of mine there had an astute way of summing up the profiles of Montreal's two English-language universities.
McGill, she used to say, was akin to New York's Columbia University -- Ivy League, uptight and a bit too full of itself. Concordia, by contrast, constituted a distinct parallel with New York University -- more artsy and progressive, with an emphasis on faculties and departments like fine arts and communications. Concordia, she concluded, might not make any Maclean's Top 5 lists, but it was, without question, the cool school. (And in the spirit of full disclosure, I should state that these days I teach a course in journalism there.)
But this progressive and artsy university hasn't been looking quite so cool in recent weeks. In its bid to amalgamate much of its downtown campus (many of its offices and classrooms are scattered in rented digs throughout the west-central urban core), Concordia's administration has proceeded with plans to demolish the venerable York Cinema, which it owns, and build a new complex on the prime real estate that will be freed up as a result of that destruction.
Constructed in 1938, the York is hardly old by Montreal architectural standards. By cinema standards, however, the building has been dubbed "the last grand movie palace built in Montreal," by the Historic Theatres' Trust, a national charity launched in 1989 to champion the preservation of historic Canadian theatres. HTH director Janet MacKinnon, herself a graduate of Concordia's fine-arts program, has lambasted the administration for its decision to unleash the wrecking ball.
"The university seems to have no idea about the asset of keeping this cinema," she says. "It's part of a larger abysmal track record they have on respecting heritage buildings."
If the York is destroyed, the building that takes its place -- and Concordia is already accepting competitive bids on that -- would house much of the university's engineering department and, ultimately, its cinema department. Which in turn supplies this controversy's most ironic twist: that a cinema like the York may be destroyed to make way for a cinema school (and one many consider the best in Canada). Cinema-department professors are reluctant to make public statements, but two, speaking to me on condition of anonymity, expressed sadness at the loss of the York.
For its part, the university administration has defended its plan of action as an imperfect but ultimately practical solution to a major dilemma. The university needs the space desperately, says Con U. vice-rector Michael DiGrappa. "We've had our eyes on that property for a decade," he says, "not for the theatre but for the land. We must vacate 400,000 square feet [36,000 square metres]of rental spaces throughout downtown Montreal in the coming years, and we're going to need new space for those facilities."
Unfortunately, he continues, the university has "no need for another cinema space. We already have two downtown and one at Loyola [Concordia's campus in the Notre Dame De Grace neighbourhood] We can't really afford the space to have another."
Preservationists have countered that the university has simply not fully explored its options, contending that the cinema could be preserved and fully restored, and that the university's other auditorium spaces, which have little or no historical value and are less remarkable than the York, be converted into office or classroom space.
Still, the preservationist forces, backed by every key heritage organization in the city, were dealt a blow by the Montreal Gazette last month, when columnist Mike Boone urged the city to "bring on the bulldozers." In a prominently placed article on page two, the city's only English-language daily printed Boone's rant, in which he stated that "this is not historic Vieux Montréal. This is not the graceful slope of Mount Royal. This is a woebegone commercial block, the appearance of which will be dramatically enhanced by anything, short of a roller-coaster, that Concordia decides to build."
Boone cited, as evidence of the York's user-unfriendliness, his tour of the building -- one marked by boarded-up, broken windows, graffiti and general disrepair.
But that sentiment, says MacKinnon, is itself part of the unsettling and burgeoning trend of "demolition by neglect," in which developers allow architectural landmarks to deteriorate to the point where they appear unsalvageable -- effectively sidestepping major waves of public outcry, as most will see the destruction route as the only sane and logical outcome. (And to be fair, Concordia can only be held partially accountable for this; the university did not acquire the building until 1998.)
But even in its current state -- and despite the fact that much of the focus of the debate has surrounded the preservation of the cinema's interior, a stunning art-deco design by Emmanual Briffa -- I would argue that the York's exterior must also be seen as worthy of saving, with its unique fire escapes and the intricate tilework scaling its walls.
Sadly, it seems that with the university's estimated price tag on preservation of the cinema (more than $9-million, they report), the wrecking ball will win the day. And Montreal will have lost the York, one of the city's most grandiose examples of cinema design.