Who Will the Entrepôt Van Horne Belong To?

The Entrepôt Van Horne's seven storeys of exposed concrete and brick along Van Horne Avenue, a nearly windowless façades rising out of the wedge of land between Saint-Laurent Boulevard and the CP rail corridor, has become a icon of the city's northside skyline over the years. Even its rusted water tower punching up above the roofline.

Over its century of existence it's been a grain warehouse, document storage depot, and canvas for artists, and now a source of neighbourhood debate over what its future should be. After years of back-and-forth between developer, borough, and the public, that future is finally taking shape.

A quick backstory

The warehouse was built in 1924 by Wilfrid Duquette, a flour, grain and coal merchant who had been operating along Saint-Laurent since the early 1900s. The site was ideal: it sat directly adjacent to the Canadian Pacific transcontinental rail line, making it a natural hub for moving goods between the rail network and the city's streets. Three freight elevators handled cargo inside, while thick masonry walls kept merchandise temperature-stable and a sophisticated dry-sprinkler system guarded against fire. The water tower atop the building, installed as part of that fire-suppression infrastructure, stopped being used in 1992 and remains the last surviving industrial water tower in the neighbourhood.