In the late 19th century, the heyday of the metalworking industry in Montreal, the area known as the Faubourg des Récollets was a thriving industrial quarter with a growing number of warehouses and foundries. With industrial operations bringing their share of unsanitary conditions, residents began slowly abandoning the neighbourhood. By the end of the 20th century, it was the industries that left one by one, leaving many buildings vacant. Several were demolished to make way for expansive parking lots.

Standing in ghostly witness to the industrial history of Montreal and its sprawling working-class neighbourhoods, the Faubourg des Récollets near the turn of the millennium was still a neighbourhood in dereliction, its buildings slowly dying and awaiting the swing of the wrecking ball. The Darling Foundry was among them.

It was to address the challenge of this surfeit of vacant buildings that French artist Caroline Andrieux arrived in Montreal at the invitation of Quebec’s minister of culture in the mid-1990s. She co-founded the organization Quartier Éphémère (literally, “ephemeral” or “pop-up” neighbourhood), moving into a former warehouse near the Old Port of Montreal lent by the City in exchange for occupancy, development into an event venue, and upkeep.

The partnership set itself the task of spurring artistic activity in the neglected, post-industrial Faubourg des Récollets. In 1997, they organized an event called Panique au Faubourg, which highlighted all of the vacant buildings in a circuit of site-specific installations by artists. It soon became apparent that artists’ enormous needs for both studio space and presentation venues were a perfect fit with the needs of the vacated district: they were the key to its rebirth.

After demonstrating the potential of the Darling Foundry as one such venue with a work by Claude Lévesque, Quartier Éphémère learned that the building was slated for demolition. The organization therefore asked the owner, the City of Montreal, to grant a one-year reprieve in which to develop a project for the site. They occupied the interior of the foundry with construction-site trailer beginning in 2000, and within the promised one-year span had reached the critical mass of partners and resources needed to renovate the space. It was then established as the new headquarters of Quartier Éphémère in 2006 and has since become effervescent hub for creative practice and artists’ residencies.

The creation of the Quartier Éphémère, the repurposing of the Darling Foundry and the many artistic endeavours hosted there have appealed to the public’s imagination, strongly influencing the perception of the Faubourg des Récollets and shaping its evolution. The now fully repurposed Darling Foundry offers 3,500 m2 of space dedicated to the visual arts, a unique complex in Montreal and an exceptional vehicle for cultural promotion in Montreal, Quebec, the rest of Canada and around the world.

Art was here used to unlock the potential of abandoned post-industrial buildings slated for demolition, through temporary occupancy or a more permanent transition to new uses. Before she arrived in Montreal, Caroline Andrieux had co-founded Usine Éphémère in France, a group that helped rehabilitate a dozen or vacant properties of various sizes including a 20-hectare (50-acre) hospital on the Butte Montmartre in Paris—a case that is particularly inspiring for the many hospitals and other institutional complexes that currently sit abandoned in Montreal.