AA-2026-48AB95
On the image
Somewhere in the 1950s, a working port was doing exactly what working ports had always done — loading, unloading, smoking, and generally being indifferent to aesthetics — while someone on a departing vessel decided it was worth photographing. The freighter in the foreground sits low and rust-banded at the waterline, still venting steam from its stack, the kind of general-cargo ship that moved the physical goods of the postwar boom before container shipping made the whole visible drama of longshoremen and derrick cranes obsolete. Behind it, the city skyline does what 1950s Montreal skylines were very good at: mixing the civic ambition of château-roofed towers with the workaday solidity of mid-century commercial blocks, a combination that read as 'important North American city' in every promotional brochure of the era. The St. Lawrence waterfront here was at something close to its commercial peak — a port that handled transatlantic trade the way it had for two centuries, on the confident assumption that oceangoing freighters would always dock at its piers. Within a decade the St. Lawrence Seaway would reroute traffic and containerisation would empty the sheds, which is what made this particular afternoon worth nothing to the man with the camera and worth quite a lot to everyone who came after.
Visually related — by likeness
Port of Montreal Waterfront with Freighters, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-48AB95. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/port-of-montreal-waterfront-with-freighters-1950s.
@misc{aaAA202648AB95,
title = {Port of Montreal Waterfront with Freighters, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-48AB95},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/port-of-montreal-waterfront-with-freighters-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Port of Montreal Waterfront with Freighters, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-48AB95 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/port-of-montreal-waterfront-with-freighters-1950s ER -
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