Founded in 1939 in Ottawa, the National Film Board (NFB) is a federal agency that produces and distributes audiovisual works in Canada’s two official languages. Its offices moved to Côte-de-Liesse in Montreal, southwest of the Saint-Laurent borough, in 1956. The complex includes six pavilions, the first three of which were designed by architects Ross, Patterson, Townsend and Fish.

At the time, the complex was erected in a field. In its heyday, this isolated site, with its 3000 employees, was a beehive of activity. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, the adjacent spaces of the Côte-de-Liesse sector, were divided into lots for residential, institutional, industrial and commercial projects.

The complex is an important example of the architectural forms of the 1950s, a period of transition between traditional architecture (its symmetry and use of brick) and modernism (especially its horizontality). It is an example of the type of government building erected in the context of public-sector expansion following the Second World War. Five of the six pavilions are interlinked rectangular volumes of two to four floors, with flat roof, ribbon windows and buff-coloured brick façades.

The interior of the complex was characterized by modern features, each pavilion serving a specific function: Block A housed offices, the cafeteria and a movie theatre around an interior courtyard; Block B contained mechanical components and Block C a large sound stage, one of the very few built according to the Hollywood model. Block D, erected in 1965, housed animation studios, before being leased to a private company. Block E, built in 1958, was modified in 1997, including its façades, and housed a refrigerated vault for video archives. Block F, built in 1968, unoccupied for several years before the move, is isolated from the rest of the complex, with a very different and modern construction (five storeys and glass façades).

The NFB featured its name and the “man seeing” logo on its main facade. The latter, added to the original building in the 1960s, came to be widely recognized. It was removed in April 2019 and installed inside the NFB’s new offices in December 2019. The letters on the building’s façade, which form the organization’s name, are artefacts as is its logo, and the NFB will ensure that they are removed and preserved for a purpose that has yet to be determined.

Since the move, several proposals have been submitted to the federal government to obtain a space in the former buildings of the National Film Board. The City of Montreal and what used to be the Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys, in particular, have shown interest in creating a school and a technological hub there. Some local organizations, such as the Centre Communautaire Bon Courage de Place Benoît and Le jardin des rêves daycare would also like to find a home there. However, very little information has been made public.

Heritage Montréal took an interest in the matter as soon as discussions began on the relocation of the NFB to the Quartier des spectacles. Regular contacts and exchanges with the institution and the Canada Lands Company (CLC) have continued since.

More recently, Heritage Montréal collaborated in the organization of a site visit, on September 6, 2018, as part of an “open house” of the NFB during the Journées de la culture, in order to discuss the conversion possibilities following the relocation of the organization in the fall of 2019.

Finally, Heritage Montréal published an advance notice (in French) in October 2019 as well as a press release (in French) related to this notice.