W hen erecting a skyscraper in Montréal, the people behind Le 1000 rue de la Gauchetière (1000 Gauchetiere Street) balanced the needs of the modern metropolis with architectural sensitivity. This hasn't always been the case in the city's Ville-Marie neighborhood. Although this area is home to Basilique-Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde (Mary Queen of the World Cathedral), it has been visually assaulted by a generation of bland, tasteless, steel-and-concrete monoliths. Le 1000 helps address this as well as it can. To be sure, with its blue glass and masonry grid, this is a thoroughly 1990's skyscraper. But it there are a few ornamental concessions which help soften the blow to the neighborhood. The corners feature vertical glass piers which lead the eye upwards and onto the angles of the roof-line. The sloping roof, superfluous in a skyscraper, is a faint echo of the cathedral's dome and spire, and ads a bit of variety to the skyline. In the old section of Montréal, flat uniform roofs are a desirable element of architectural uniformity.
When skyscrapers like this sprout, they assume the role that church spires and belltowers held in punctuating the skylines of historic Europe. Again, Le 1000's sloping roof helps cushion the blow by vaguely mimicking these forms in the new world.
At the time of its completion, this skyscraper reached the maximum height allowed for structural elements in Montréal by law.
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