Curated Itinerary
Montreal Art Deco: a walk through downtown skyscrapers, station, cinema and market
See Montreal’s Art Deco treasures from the Aldred Building to Atwater Market, passing an office tower, Central Station and the York Theatre, with a metro ride between stops.
Take this route into Google Maps
From Aldred Building to Atwater Market, in the order we curated them.
➤ Turn on the navigator in Google MapsIt opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
A walk of 5.1 km through central Montréal covers five stops, from Place d’Armes to the Atwater Market. The route begins at the Aldred Building, a limestone skyscraper of 1931 whose setbacks echo New York towers in scale with the square. It then passes the site of the demolished Architects’ Building, visits Montreal Central Station, recalls the York Theatre through three salvaged murals, and ends at the Atwater Market.
The walk moves through downtown and along the Lachine Canal. It takes about 185 minutes on foot, with a stretch served by the canal bicycle path. The buildings date from 1930 to 1943, when Montréal adopted Art Deco for offices, transport and cinema. The central station’s bas-relief friezes, the cinema murals now in Concordia’s complex, and the market hall of 1933 show the style’s range in public and commercial work.
The itinerary suits spring and autumn, when the streets are clear and the canal path is usable. In summer, the market area is busier; in winter, snow and ice slow the route. The sequence follows the historic core outward to the canal, ending at a working market where the Art Deco hall still fronts the water.
Read the article
The magazine has a longer piece on this walk: Montreal Art Deco: A Walk Through Downtown Towers, Station, Cinema and Market.
Step by step
Aldred Building
A limestone skyscraper that steps back toward the sky like a small Manhattan transplanted onto a seventeenth-century square.
Architects’ Building (Montreal)
A 17-story Art Deco office tower designed by Ross and Macdonald in 1930–31.
Montreal Central Station
Canada's second-busiest rail hub, Montreal Central Station has welcomed nearly 11 million passengers annually since 1943, serving the Quebec City–Windsor…
York Theatre (Montreal)
A 1938 Art Deco cinema and mixed-use complex in Montreal designed by Perry, Luke and Little, with acclaimed interior murals by Kenneth Hensley Holmden.
Atwater Market
An Art Deco market hall in Montreal's Saint-Henri neighbourhood, opened 1933, blending butchers and bakery indoors with outdoor farmers' stalls along…
Download for tour navigation
PDF is the stop list with GPS, to print or keep on the phone. GPX for Garmin / Komoot / OsmAnd. KML for Google Earth and Maps.
Walk it with the navigator on
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
To keep the route in the app instead of opening it once, download the KML above and import it into Google My Maps — Create a new map, then Import: the route then sits among your own maps in Google Maps, with the stops and our notes attached to each one.