Art & Architecture

This is the largest, busiest, and most complex station in the network, spanning three lines, and has been the hub of the metro network since the metro was inaugurated in 1966. To accommodate these functions, the main part of the station was built in a massive cross-shaped cut-and-cover volume underneath Boulevard De Maisonneuve and Rue Berri. The station’s roof actually consists of crossing reinforced-concrete bridges that support the roadways above, held up by the station’s columns.

The station occupies five underground levels: the concourse, the orange line, the green line, the access to the yellow line, and the yellow line. The first three of these are located in the main open-cut excavation, with the orange line in the north-south part of the excavation, and the green line in the east-west volume. The yellow line and its accesses are built in separate mined tunnels to the west, under Rue Saint-Denis.

The station’s ticket hall level occupies the space above the two trainrooms, featuring a concourse at the intersection of the cross-shaped volume, with access corridors radiating outward over the station’s platforms. The concourse is a broad rectangular space, consisting of a central fare-paid zone ringed with a fare-free area that connects all the various accesses.

The Rue Berri entrance and the underground city accesses to the Grande Bibliothèque and UQAM’s Judith-Jasmin building open directly onto the central concourse. The completion of the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec brought natural light to the concourse for the first time via a sunken garden.

The corridors leading outward from the concourse, clockwise from the east, connect to the De Maisonneuve exit and Place Dupuis; the Sainte-Catherine exit; the Saint-Denis exit and the UQAM’s music building; and the exit in the former bus terminal. Various shops and services line the concourse and the corridors. The corridors to the De Maisonneuve and Saint-Denis exits have had STM historical displays, called Escale STM, added to them.

Three of these four corridors used to have openings looking down onto the orange and green line platforms, allowing dramatic vistas into the station’s main volume. Unfortunately, after a tear-gas attack in this station in 2001, these were closed to prevent harmful gases or smoke from spreading throughout the station. One of the openings was mostly closed over and replaced with a restaurant seating area; happily, the other two have been kept open but enclosed with glass, partially preserving the view while respecting safety requirements.

The wide central ticket hall has turnstiles on all four sides, receiving passengers entering from any of the station’s accesses, with ticket booths on the north and south sides. Stairwells at the four corners of the fare-paid zone, along with two elevators, lead to the orange line platforms and thence to the other lines.

The ticket hall’s distinctive ceiling features concentric squares made up of white plates that diffuse light from enclosed fixtures. At the centre of the ticket hall is a black granite circular bench, popularly called “la puck”; set into it is a circular plaque by Robert LaPalme and Georges Lauda commemorating the inauguration of the metro. The “puck” is a popular meeting point for passengers.

The low ceilings of the orange line trainroom, directly underneath the concourse level, are compensated for by the wide landings on either side of the tracks. These connect the platforms with the staircases, escalators, and elevators that lead up to the ticket hall and down to the other lines.

On the south side of each of these landings, impressive escalator wells, descend inward to another wide landing extending south from the Honoré-Beaugrand platform below. On the north side, other large escalator wells descend outward to the Angrignon platform, ending in broad side aisles that give access to the platform.

Smaller, outward-facing escalator wells connect both orange line platforms with the ends of the Honoré-Beaugrand platform, and a further stairwell, added after the station was opened,² connects the Côte-Vertu and Angrignon platforms.

In contrast to the orange line, the full height of the east-west volume towers dramatically over the ends of the green line trainroom. The architects used expansive volumes over the green line and over the stairwells to avoid the confusing and alienating effect of a warren of tunnels often seen in major transfer stations in other cities. Broad, flat expanses of wall loom over the Honoré-Beaugrand platform, emphasizing the volume’s height. On the Angrignon side, by contrast, the side aisles mentioned above form a continuous open volume with the trainroom, separated by thick piers.

Rising above the eastern end of the green line trainroom, above the tracks, is the station’s main artwork, a huge stained-glass mural by Pierre Gaboriau and Pierre Osterrath. Entitled Hommage aux fondateurs de la ville de Montréal, it represents three people who were instrumental in the foundation of Montreal: Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière, who bought the island for the colony; Jeanne Mance, the founder of the Hôtel-Dieu; and Paul Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, the colony’s first commander. Representing its subjects in striking shades of blue, red, and green, the work, despite its figurative subject, owes a great deal to the abstraction of the Automatiste movement.

At the western end of the two green line platforms, escalator wells lead down to the yellow line. These are aligned with the escalators coming down from the orange line, making for efficient passenger flow.

Another connection to the yellow line descends from the central landing on the Honoré-Beaugrand platform, via another large, imposing escalator well. This connection, through which visitors passed to get to the Expo 67 fairgrounds on Île Sainte-Hélène, is decorated with a set of murals created for Expo’s Place d’Accueil by Robert LaPalme. Moved here afterward by special request of Mayor Jean Drapeau, they symbolically depict science, culture, and recreation, the major themes of Expo.

This main escalator well reaches the yellow line via a long, somewhat tedious curved corridor, leading to a landing also joined by the two staircases from the end of the green line platforms. This landing is brightened with a decorative mural called Le mur de la paix, created by the STM’s graphic design department. In colours matching the tiling on the yellow line platforms, it features the word “peace” written in many different languages.

Unusually, the crossover to the departure platform lacks an open transept. The yellow line terminus is brightened with white, yellow, orange, brown, and black tiled motifs by Claude Vermette, recently acknowledged as artworks by the STM.

The vast majority of the station is clad in neutral tones that emphasize the spaces and surfaces. Over more than ten years between 2010 and 2021, the station underwent a massive and intricate renovation project, one of whose most visible signs was the replacement of the wall finishings throughout the station. Large expanses of grey circular tiles were replaced with circular glass tiles, with grey gradients added in certain areas. The upper portions of the walls along the main green line volume are in smooth concrete, with a huge concrete mass added to the northeastern corner, somewhat narrowing that end of the Angrignon platform.

On the street level, all but one of the entrances are integrated into the ground floor of other buildings – two UQAM buildings, the former bus terminal (a shabby prospect), and the Place Dupuis complex.

The one freestanding headhouse, located at Berri and Sainte-Catherine in Place Émilie-Gamelin, was rebuilt in 1999 in the same postmodern style as the new entrances built at the same time at Beaudry, Papineau, and Frontenac, the next three stations down the line. It is surprisingly tall for a metro entrance, with a second story containing technical installations, and is done in glass, concrete, and steel.

This entrance houses a statue by Raoul Hunter of Mother Émilie Gamelin, the namesake of the square in which the entrance stands. The square is in fact the former site of the mother house of the Sœurs de la Providence, which she founded; it served among other things as a well-known soup kitchen serving the city’s destitute, and was demolished in 1964 to make way for the station. The statue was commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of Mother Gamelin’s birth. It is one of only two figurative statues in the metro, the other being the statue of Jacques Cartier at Place-Saint-Henri, and the only one made specifically for the metro. Mother Gamelin is shown in the act of distributing bread; passers-by are so often drawn to shake the statue’s outstretched hand that it has developed a smooth polish.