Île Sainte-Hélène Pavilion
Built between 1927 and 1931, this Art Deco building, a rare style in Montreal, is located on Île Sainte-Hélène.
Did you know that the roof of the Île Sainte-Hélène Pavilion (ISHP) supports part of the Jacques Cartier Bridge’s road and active mobility lanes and is an integral part of this infrastructure?
A treasure from the past
In your travels over the Jacques Cartier Bridge, you’ve probably noticed one of the four turrets on the roof of the Île Sainte-Hélène Pavilion, found halfway between Montreal and the South Shore.
With a total area of 7,145 square metres, the pavilion includes:
- two basements
- a ground floor
- an upper floor
- a mezzanine
Its foundations were built into the side of the bedrock. The building is made of concret
A treasure from the past
In your travels over the Jacques Cartier Bridge, you’ve probably noticed one of the four turrets on the roof of the Île Sainte-Hélène Pavilion, found halfway between Montreal and the South Shore.
With a total area of 7,145 square metres, the pavilion includes:
- two basements
- a ground floor
- an upper floor
- a mezzanine
Its foundations were built into the side of the bedrock. The building is made of concrete slabs and walls and a system of steel beams and columns.
A pedestrian walkway was built into the pavilion to connect the east side (sidewalk) and west side (multipurpose path) of the Jacques Cartier Bridge.
Admire two murals by Montreal artist Rafael Sottolichio. They give the tunnel the feel of a journey through time, thanks to a sequence of illustrated canvases depicting an era when the city vibrated to the rhythm of its largest construction sites.
This tunnel is also a point of interest in the Stories and Bridges technical and historical tour.
The bronze bust of Jacques Cartier was a gift from the French government in June 1934 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of this great explorer’s first voyage to Canada.
In 1978, PJCCI was created to manage the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. The Île Sainte-Hélène Pavilion (ISHP), a formidable Art Deco building, became the property of JCCBI.
Île Sainte-Hélène has long had historical significance. The British government acquired the land in the early 19th century to build a military complex before the Ville de Montréal used it as a park in 1874.
With the construction of the Jacques Cartier Bridge (called the Harbour Bridge at the time) in 1930 and of Île Notre-Dame in 1967, the area has changed a great deal.
Originally the pavilion was supposed to be a casino, but this project never got off the ground because the church vetoed the idea. The next plan was to create ballrooms and exhibit halls, but these were never completed either.
As time went on, the Second World War and the economic crisis of 1929 gave the pavilion an unexpected purpose, as the Canadian army took over the building to use as a warehouse, which it did until the start of the 1950s.
On the initial engineering plans, the Jacques Cartier Bridge was to have three traffic lanes and a reserved streetcar lane on each side. The Île Sainte-Hélène pavilion was therefore going to be a streetcar station. But since no streetcar ever made it over over the Jacques Cartier Bridge, this was yet another plan that never came to pass.
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