Tour de la Banque Royale

Tour de la Banque Royale (Royal Bank Tower) is a skyscraper at 360 Saint-Jacques Street in Montréal, Quebec. The 22-storey 121 m (397 ft) neo-classical tower was designed by the firm of York and Sawyer, and was the tallest building in the British Empire, and the first building in city taller than Montréal's Notre-Dame Basilica when completed in 1926.

In 1907 the Royal Bank of Canada moved its head office from Halifax to Montreal. As the building in Saint-Jacob Street turned out to be too small, in 1926 the board of directors of the biggest bank in Canada hired New York architects York and Sawyer to build a prestigious new building on Saint-Jacques Street. Between 1920 and 1926 the bank had bought up all the property between Saint-Jacques, Saint-Pierre, Notre-Dame and Dollard Streets to demolish all the buildings there including the old Mechanics' Institute and the ten-storey Bank of Ottawa building in order to make space for the new 22-storey building.

In 1962, the Royal Bank moved its main office to another famous Montreal building, Place Ville-Marie. The Royal Bank still keeps a branch in the impressive main hall of the old building, situated in Old Montreal. That branch is scheduled to relocate to the nearby Tour de la Bourse in 2012[1].

See also

• Bank of Montreal Head Office, Montreal
• Molson Bank Building, Montreal
• Tour CIBC
• Old Canadian Bank of Commerce Building, Montreal
• Royal Bank Plaza - RBC corporate offices in Toronto

References

External links

• Vieux-Montréal – Fiche d'un bâtiment: Banque Royale
• 360 Saint-Jacques - Technical Specifications