Tour de la Bourse, Office skyscraper in Quartier international de Montréal, Canada.
Tour de la Bourse is a 48-storey office tower at Victoria Square and Saint Jacques Street, 190 m tall, designed by Luigi Moretti and Pier Luigi Nervi. Its bronze-tinted anodized aluminium curtain wall is divided into three roughly equal blocks by recessed mechanical floors, and slightly slanted pre-cast concrete columns at the four corners give the facades a subtly convex line.
Completed in 1964, the tower held Canada's tallest building title briefly until 1967 when Toronto-Dominion Centre surpassed it. This transition marked a shift in how Canadian cities were competing for architectural prominence.
The tower's name comes from the Montreal Exchange, its anchor tenant on floors 3 and 4 since the building opened. In March 2010 artist Aude Moreau switched the room lights of the upper floors on and off to spell the word "Sortir" across the facades. The recessed octagonal corners of the mechanical floors leave open-air gaps behind the corner columns.
The interior is primarily office space not open to the public, but you can view the exterior from street level throughout the neighborhood. The location in the business district makes it easy to reach on foot from nearby attractions.
Since 1984 a pair of peregrine falcons has nested in the recess of the 32nd floor, inside the octagonal notch left where the mechanical level's corners are cut back. The birds are not the only unexpected detail: the tower has its own postal code prefix, H4Z.
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