Grates or Gates – Montreal Walls – Ten

See more of Montreal Walls…

The foundations and corner stones around the older edifices of the city often seem incongruent with the buildings they support and I’m sure if I were to do a little research, I’d find images of the original structures. I often let my imagination run free and wonder if the original openings in the foundations might have been for coal chutes or over-door windows on long buried cellar entrances. In the case of these bronze grates, they seem very out of place on their current vertical surface. Their excellent condition and lack of hammer marks brings me to conclude they may not have been an original accoutrement for this building. The reason I wonder if they may have been grates, is that many of the older banks often had bronze ones near they doorways, and I could easily imagine these having been reused from that original purpose.

On this cloudy day, the colours were muted, but pure as seen here. I only stretched the horizontal perspective to slightly confound the reality of their being window coverings. All else is as you see it. You will find several samples of these close to the more imperious buildings near the Basilica in Old Montreal.

More to come…