Art & Architecture

This graceful and beautiful station is centred on a monumental main volume. The ceiling of this space over the platforms is planned as a succession of stacked vaults in exposed concrete, each higher than the last, whose forms are mirrored on the facing wall.

Very tall, dramatic triangular recesses are sunk into the walls on either side of the platforms at the foot of the escalators. These recesses, highlighted in glazed yellow brick, allow light down into the trainroom from the main headhouse, on one side, and a light shaft on the other.

The volume is made even more dramatic by the tall curtain walls that separate the dizzyingly deep escalator wells from the main vault, making the impact of the scale of the volume all the more striking to a passenger reaching the bottom.

The walls at platform level are decorated in glazed brick, forming a series of panels in an attractive progression of colours. Starting with spring green at either end, they move through aquamarine, blue, maroon, red, and orange to meet in the large yellow expanses at the centre. This brightens up the platform level even for travellers just passing through on the trains.

The triangular light shafts in the main volume continue a motif of hexagons and equilateral triangles (which themselves form hexagons) throughout the station. Among other things, these shapes can be found in the floor tiles, the support pillars, the ceiling and skylight coffers, and the forms of the main headhouse.

The station’s ticket hall is located in a broad and very long concourse atop the main volume. It is separated by a long row of turnstiles from the equally broad fare-paid zone, which overlooks the monumental main stairwells on either side. The tops of the stairs are located near the end of the fare-paid zone.

Outside the gateline and branching off to the south, a bridge spans the escalator well to the Montmorency platform, leading to the wide staircase up to the main headhouse, the Saint-Ferdinand exit. This split-level concrete and brick building, encircled by a bus loop, repeats the geometric theme with its irregular shape based on hexagons and triangles. A large hexagonal skylight illuminates the stairs and the light shafts below. The triangle-coffered roof extends outward to provide a deep overhang, sheltering passengers waiting at the bus stops.

Continuing straight from the gateline instead, the concourse continues into a long hallway to the station’s two eastern headhouses. These were built in 2020-2024 during elevator installation work and replaced two former open-air entrances and the outdoor underground gallery between them (see Trivia below). A large section of the gallery was in fact incorporated into the station’s interior, a fact revealed by the pillars and flat triangular ceiling coffers in the nearer section of the new hallway. The new walls in this area are in dark brown brick.

First, on the north side of the hallway, are the stairs to the Saint-Jacques headhouse, a small building not much wider than the stairwell it encloses. Like its mate, it is a relatively tall, rectangular structure almost entirely in glass with black framing and a green roof.

Just beyond the foot of these stairs is the elevator to the Côte-Vertu platform. This is enclosed in a separate fare-paid zone that runs the whole length of the hallway to the Place Saint-Henri headhouse to connect the station’s two elevators. The station’s unique geometry made the installation of elevators a complex puzzle, and this somewhat convoluted arrangement is the result. This fare-paid zone has two sets of fare gates, one at either end, near each elevator.

The hallway, split between the fare-paid and fare-free zones, continues for about another 40 metres until it reaches the Place Saint-Henri entrance. This headhouse hosts the elevator between the surface, the concourse level, and the Montmorency platform. The simple exterior, with entrances on the west and south, belies a complicated layout inside. A gateline at street level leads to the elevator alone. In addition, two separate, narrow stairwells lead down from either end of the headhouse to the concourse-level hallway. The beams in the concrete ceiling form triangular coffers, a nod to the station’s original architecture.

The station is home to multiple artworks. The most prominent is a massive and cheerful mobile by Jacques de Tonnancour. It is suspended in a shaft through the floor of the concourse, with the upper element in a glass-walled enclosure in the middle of the concourse, and the lower element hanging down into the vault over the tracks.

It was formerly motorized, but the motor no longer functions; however, a strong wind from train motion (or a helping hand from a passenger in the concourse) can spin it slowly, a startling and amusing sight.

Next, the rear wall of the ticket hall hosts a subtle and often-overlooked mural by station architect Julien Hébert. It commemorates the title of Gabrielle Roy’s famous novel Bonheur d’occasion (The Tin Flute), which is set in the neighbourhood of Saint-Henri. The novel’s title is spelled out in bricks glazed in the colours used on the platforms below, interspersed among the plain bricks.

The station later welcomed an existing artwork, a statue of the explorer Jacques Cartier, who claimed Canada for France in 1534. The beloved statue by Joseph-Arthur Vincent had stood since 1896 atop a fountain in nearby Parc Saint-Henri. After it had fallen apart and been repaired several times due to exposure, the decision was made to replace it with a copy and move the restored original here, protecting it from the elements while keeping it on public view. Installed in 2001, it stands atop a pedestal suspended in the northern lighting shaft mentioned above, looking out onto the concourse.

Finally, the construction of the new headhouses was accompanied by a 1% artwork by Véronique La Perrière M, installed in 2025. Entitled Rives scintillantes, the work consists of a ceramic mosaic located in the hallway just below the Place Saint-Henri headhouse, accompanied by a smaller, circular mosaic in the headhouse, on the concrete wall of the elevator shaft above the north staircase. The work’s shimmering white and blue shades honour the natural environment that preceded the development of the neighbourhood, including now-lost watercourses such as Lac à la Loutre and the Saint-Pierre River and the vegetation they sustained. From within the glass-walled headhouse, the circular section overlooks the street like a moon.