Sunday, November 07, 2010

Montreal's Centre-Sud exploration part 3 - Nuns Island


Now this is a forest-friendly condo development.




3 explorations south of downtown.

Green: week 1 - Pointe St-Charles
Blue: week 2 - Bonaventure, Cité du Havre, and Ile Ste-Helene
Red: week 3 - Today's Nuns island ride.


Ducks-eye view of Montreal skyline from Nun's Island shoreline.





Parc
Marguerite-Bourgeoys in Verdun

Nun's Island is part of Verdun. We crossed Verdun to get to the island of sisters. The parc shown here is very close to Maison Saint-Gabriel, one of Montreal's finest historical treasures.




Mies's famous Nun's Island Esso station, now being converted into a mystery.




Mies's apartment tower, yes, the first floor is see-through.

Mies has buildings at three sites in Montreal. Can you name the third one? It's the easy one of the three.





Pont Champlain bridge. The Estacade bike path crosses the river on the other side of this bridge.



Over the past 3 Sundays we've ridden south of downtown, to reach some of Montreal's shoreline on the Saint Laurence river.

We visited Point-St-Charles, Goose Village, the Bonaventure and Cite du havre waterfront, Ile Saint Helene, and today we went further south and crossed over to the the island of Nun's Island / Ile des Soeurs.

We wanted to see the new bike path along the north end of the island, the two Mies van de Rohe buildings, and some impressive old growth forest trees that are in large courtyards between the buildings. These early nun's island condos were built with a intense sensitivity to nature. Well, that didn't last!

2 Comments:

At 9:41 PM, Blogger Victor Chisholm said...

Isn't the third Mies building that tower in Westmount (Westmount Square?).

I love reading your blog because so many of your cycling and other preferences resonate with mine. Keep up the good work!

 
At 7:31 AM, Blogger Cycle Fun Montreal said...

And victor wins the prize.

The trick part of the question is that Westmount square is three buildings, so many people asume that the three buildings of Westmount Square are the three "projects" that Mies did in Montreal.

There is a documentary film (2003 movie Ordinaire ou Super) about the esso gas station that gives some good info on it and other Mies bildings in Montreal.

 

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