New Building Technology in Canada's Late Nineteenth-Century Department Stores: Handmaiden of Monopoly Capitalism

An examination of the architecture of late nineteenth-century department stores in Montreal and Toronto. The author points out that the nineteenth century has often been described as an age of secularization, in which architects dedicated their talents to the modern Mammon worshipper. The department store, he contends, that emporium of profligate consumerism, was the supreme culmination of this tendency. The author examines the architecture of the department stores that were built in Old Montreal and later along St. Catherine Street.

Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada /Journal de la Société pour l’étude de l’architecture au Canada

Vol. 23

no. 4

124-142

1998

en