Place Ville Marie

Place Ville-Marie or 1, Place Ville-Marie is a cruciform] office tower built in the International style in 1962 along with an underground shopping mall which forms the nexus of Montreal's underground city, one of the world's largest, with indoor access to over 1,600 shops, restaurants, offices, and businesses, as well as many of Montreal's metro stations, transportation termini, and tunnels extending all over downtown.

The name "Place Ville-Marie" is often used to refer to the cruciform building only but it also applies to three shorter office buildings which were built around it in 1963 and 1964, and to the urban plaza which lies on top of the largest section of the shopping promenade, and between the buildings. From a postal point of view the cruciform tower is "1, Place Ville-Marie" and the lesser buildings around it are "2, Place Ville-Marie" and so on. The buildings and the plaza have been given many facelifts over the years. In the latest much of the grey concrete and terrazzo of the plaza was covered with grass, flowers and shrubs. The complex has 2.7 million square feet of space and parking for about 900 cars. There are about 70 tenants with 3,000 employees.

The location of Place Ville-Marie was originally a deep hole gouged in the flanks of Mount Royal by the need to give a Northern extension to the tracks of Montreal's central station of the Canadian National Railway. Most of the building was thus built over the tracks, requiring the structure to be more resistant to vibrations than normally required. As a result, it is the most earthquake-resistant office tower in Montreal.

Place Ville-Marie was one of the first designs of Henry N. Cobb and I. M. Pei, who was later to become a famous master of Modernist Architecture. His design was controversial from the start given its proximity to many Montreal landmarks and the vast changes it would bring to the downtown core.

In addition to being the only cruciform building in the core of the city, Place Ville Marie stands out even more at night because of the rotating beacon in function on its roof. Its four spotlights are visible at more than 50 kilometers.