Hockey Hall of Fame (Bank of Montreal) - Toronto, Ontario
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mTn_biKer65
N 43° 38.816 W 079° 22.627
17T E 630883 N 4833938
Located on the Northwest corner of Yonge Street and Front Street in Toronto, Ontario
Waymark Code: WMT999
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 10/18/2016
Views: 10
"The magnificent building, constructed in 1885 as the head office of the Bank of Montreal, replaced a smaller bank that had existed on that site since 1845. Designed by Darling and Curry, the architects who had recently completed the equally august Victoria Hospital for Sick Children on College Street, the Bank of Montreal's head office was the most striking of Toronto's nineteenth-century bank buildings.
Astonishingly, the building was one of but a few in the area to survive Toronto's Great Fire of 1904. The blaze, reportedly begun by a stove left burning at the end of the workday on April 19, 1904 at the E. & S. Currie neckwear factory on the north side of Wellington Street near Bay, destroyed the vast majority of the district bounded by Yonge to the east, Bay to the west, Front to the south and Wellington to the north.
From its completion in 1885, the building served as the Bank of Montreal's head office until 1949, when they moved to a location at King and Bay, with the Yonge and Front location continuing as a branch until it was closed in 1982. The heritage building sat largely unused until the latter part of that decade, when it was renovated and included in the development of Brookfield Place (formerly BCE Place). Although it was destined at one point to be an art gallery, the building was dormant until it was secured by the Hockey Hall of Fame as a new location for the ever-expanding shrine to hockey excellence." (
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