CIBC Tower () is a 45-

storey A storey (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or story (American English), is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the wor ...

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Most modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise bui ...

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. The

International Style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...

office tower was built by

Peter Dickinson Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL (16 December 1927 – 16 December 2015) was an English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories. Dickinson won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association ...

, with associate architects Ross, Fish, Duschenes and Barrett, and was the city's tallest building from 1962 to 1963. The building holds offices for the

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC; ) is a Canadian Multinational corporation, multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered at CIBC Square in the Financial District, Toronto, Financial District of Toronto, Ont ...

, the corporate law firm Stikeman Elliott, the Canadian accounting firm

MNP LLP MNP (previously known as Meyers Norris Penny) is one of the largest full-service chartered professional accountancy and business advisory firms in Canada. MNP's head office is in Calgary, Alberta, and has offices from Vancouver Island to St. Joh ...

, as well as numerous other businesses. The building is located at 1155

René Lévesque Boulevard René Lévesque Boulevard (), previously named Dorchester Boulevard, is one of the main streets in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is a main east–west thoroughfare passing through the downtown core in the borough of Ville-Marie (Montreal), Ville ...

West next to

Dorchester Square Dorchester Square, originally Dominion Square, is a large urban square in downtown Montreal. Together with Place du Canada, the area is just over or of manicured and protected urban parkland bordered by René Lévesque Boulevard to the south ...

facing the imposing but dwarfed

Sun Life Building The Sun Life Building is a historic , 24-storey office building at 1155 Metcalfe Street on Dorchester Square in the city's downtown core of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The building was completed in 1931 after three stages of construction. It was b ...

. Part of the fire-damaged Windsor Hotel was demolished to make room for construction, with the remaining portion being converted to offices in the 1980s.

History

The project was initiated by the

Canadian Bank of Commerce The Canadian Bank of Commerce was a Canadian bank that operated from 1867 to 1961. It merged in 1961 with the Imperial Bank of Canada to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which today is one of Canada's Big Five banks of Canada, Big Five ...

and announced in 1959. While the building was under construction, the Bank of Commerce merged with the

Imperial Bank of Canada The Imperial Bank of Canada was a Canadian bank that operated from 1873 to 1961. In 1961, Imperial merged with the Canadian Bank of Commerce to become the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. History It was founded in 1873 as the Imperial Bank ...

to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, effective June 1, 1961. The Imperial Bank abandoned its concurrent plan for a new head office at 612 McGill Street; that building was instead occupied by Crédit foncier franco-canadien, and since 1988 by

Quebecor Quebecor Inc. is a Canadian diversified media and telecommunications company serving Quebec based in Montreal. It was spelled Quebecor in both English and French until May 2012, when shareholders voted to add the acute accent, Québecor, in ...

. Completed in 1962, a few months before

Place Ville-Marie Place Ville Marie (, abbr. PVM) is a large office and shopping complex skyscraper in Downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada, comprising four office buildings and an underground shopping plaza. The main building, 1 Place Ville Marie (formerly Royal B ...

, the CIBC Tower was the tallest building in

and the entire

Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, often referred to as the British Commonwealth or simply the Commonwealth, is an International organization, international association of member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, 56 member states, the vast majo ...

when it was first built, until being surpassed later that year by Place Ville-Marie where a penthouse was added by the competing Royal Bank for that express purpose. The Consulate of Israel was on the 26th floor of the building and as such, it was sometimes the site of demonstrations related to the

Israeli–Palestinian conflict The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about Territory, land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation ...

. The consulate has since relocated to Westmount Square in

Westmount Westmount () is a city on the Island of Montreal, in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is an enclave of the city of Montreal, with a population of 19,658 as of the 2021 Canadian census. Westmount is home to schools, an arena, a pool, a public li ...

Architecture

The tower is exceptionally slender with only of gross floor area per floor, because of a zoning regulation limiting the total building floor area to twelve times the property area. Its façade is more ornamental than that of the average

International style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...

tower, with horizontal strips of glass curtain wall alternating with

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, between the tops of two adjacent arches, or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fil ...

s of various types of stone, including green slate that was quarried in Wales. The building was fully renovated in 1991, and the highly visible CIBC logo at the top was redesigned in 2004 and again in 2013. Inside, levels 15 and 29 are transfer floors; level 16 is a triple-height

mechanical floor A mechanical floor, mechanical penthouse, mechanical layer or mechanical level is a story of a high-rise building that is dedicated to mechanical and electronics equipment. "Mechanical" is the most commonly used term, but words such as ''utilit ...

that is skipped in the floor numbering of the passenger elevators. Levels 42-44 are also mechanical floors; level 45 was originally an indoor

observation deck An observation deck, observation platform, or viewing platform is an elevated sightseeing platform usually situated upon a tall architectural structure, such as a skyscraper or observation tower. Observation decks are sometimes enclosed from we ...

but was closed in the 1970s. The top of the tower are actually an open-air raised partition, built sometime after construction, that hides the rooftop elevator control rooms. Without this extra structure, the actual roof height is , and approximately when counting the elevator penthouse. It is the fifth tallest building in Montreal, but an antenna raises the total height to , the tallest pinnacle in Montreal. Until the end of 2018,

French-language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

CKOI-FM :For the CKOI radio network, see '' CKOI (network)''. CKOI-FM (96.9 FM) is a commercial radio station in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It airs a French-language contemporary hit radio format and is owned and operated by Cogeco. The studios are in Pl ...

transmitted its 307,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

signal from atop the building. The antenna has since been removed.

Tenants

* Minerai de fer Quebec *

Euler Hermes Allianz Trade is an international insurance company that offers a range of services, including trade credit insurance, debt collection, surety bonds and guarantees, business fraud insurance and political risk protection. It monitors the finan ...

Macquarie Group Macquarie Group Limited (), more commonly known as Macquarie Bank, is an Australian multinational investment banking and financial services group headquartered in Sydney and listed on the ASX (). Macquarie's investment banking division is Au ...

Russell Investments Russell Investments Group LLC is an American investment firm headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Corporate overview According to ''American Banker'', Russell Investments has approximately $300 billion of assets under management, as of Septemb ...

* Stikeman Elliott LLP * Vilaron Corporation * Linkeo.com *

ACE Aviation Holdings ACE Aviation Holdings Inc. was a Canadian holding company that was the former parent company of Air Canada. It was headquartered in Montreal. In 2012, the company signified its intent to dissolve, and was dissolved in 2024. History ACE Aviation ...

* Parkland Fuel Corporation

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Office buildings completed in 1962 Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Skyscraper office buildings in Montreal Bank buildings in Canada International style architecture in Canada Downtown Montreal Peter Dickinson (architect) buildings 1962 establishments in Quebec

History

Architecture

Tenants

See also

References

External links