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Historical Letters • Typography

Public Lettering in Montreal, Part II: Mid-1910s–Mid-1930s

The second part of a study of the relationship between typography and architectural context, seen through Montreal’s public lettering in the early twentieth century.
BY YULIA GONINA
April 20, 2026 ∙ 10 min. read
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Part I (1880s–early 1900s) showed that Montreal’s monumental inscriptions worked in two ways: sometimes typography mirrored the façade’s style, and sometimes it introduced a second register—another “voice”—that added depth to what the building was saying.

From the mid-1910s to the mid-1930s, the relationship grows tighter. Instead of adding a parallel layer, the lettering increasingly takes cues from architectural decisions—echoing the façade’s geometry, style, and proportional logic.
For designers working on identities, signage, or editorial systems, the point is practical: this article shows how lettering can absorb traits from its surroundings and become part of a larger visual system.
Mid-1910s–Early 1920s: Gothic Historicism Before the Art Deco Turn
This phase briefly returns to decorative historicism before architecture and lettering move toward a stricter, more geometric order. Gothic motifs are used freely, but in a simplified form, pointing toward the Art Deco language that follows.

Southam Building (1916). A modernized Gothic Revival commercial building, tall and vertically emphatic, combines Gothic ornament with an increasingly disciplined underlying order. It is a rare transitional language that anticipates mature Art Deco.

The inscription draws on medieval Lombardic capitals, but not as a faithful quote. The letters feel pared down and stylized, much like the building itself.
Caron Building (1923). Like Southam, the Caron Building develops the same pattern further: a Gothic-inflected lower zone gives way to a strict skyscraper organized around vertical order above. Its Lombardic letters move further toward abstraction, becoming rationalized and geometric.
Édifice Morin (1922). Unlike the true skyscrapers discussed here, Morin is only three stories tall. It looks almost like the stylized lower floors of a Gothic skyscraper, but without the tower above. Medieval stylizations are used abundantly here, but they appear in a fairly restrained form. This reduction hints at directions that Art Deco later takes up.

The inscription follows a parallel logic: a highly decorative revival of Lombardic capitals, reminiscent of Frederic W. Goudy’s Caxton Initials (1905). The letterforms are ornamental, allowing typography to serve as a rich Gothic complement that works on equal terms with the façade.
Period takeaway: In this phase, medieval models reappear briefly, but in a controlled, stylized form that fits the building’s stricter composition and recasts historical reference in a way that points toward Art Deco.
Late 1920s: Beaux-Arts Classicism With a Deco Tilt
Typographic References now shift from medieval sources toward classicism. The multi-story commercial structure is already established; what continues to change is the ornamental layer laid over it. These changes move the language away from Gothic specificity and toward a more abstract vocabulary.

Hermes Building (1927). The composition is Beaux-Arts at its core, with early Art Deco detailing incorporated into it. Strict vertical windows and simplified vegetal ornament do most of the work, with only a few lightly stylized Gothic touches, like arches at the top.

The inscription stays in a Beaux-Arts register, too: thin, almost jeweler-like serifed capitals. Their tight condensation pulls the eye upward, echoing the building’s long, narrow verticals and its overall drive toward height.
Dominion Square Building (1929). Here, Beaux-Arts monumentalism still sets the terms through heavy massing and classical symmetry. The lettering answers with Trajan-like capitals that make the same point, giving the building the look of a major downtown institution.
Lalonde & Frère Ltée (1929). This small, classically symmetrical shopfront leans toward clean early Art Deco, but does so in a lighter retail key. The inscription is set in Roman capitals, with subtle modernizations: a slightly raised waistline nods to a contemporary fashion seen in Art Deco inscriptions, while a decorative ampersand makes the inscription feel less formal.
Period takeaway: This phase marks a return to classical models in monumental lettering, with architecture and inscriptions once again closely linked in style.
Late 1920s–Early 1930s: Classical Art Deco as a Unified Architectural–Typographic System
By the late 1920s, Art Deco in Montreal becomes easier to recognize. In both the buildings and the inscriptions, ornament is simplified, forms become fully geometric, and vertical emphasis becomes more explicit.

Drummond Medical Building (1929). The building is highly rational, with clear ascending lines and ornament reduced to its most abstract form. The inscription, set in a clean geometric sans—a canonical, non-decorative Art Deco type—reinforces the building’s character. Only a small, almost coy waist shift remains: a controlled bit of typographic flirtation that keeps the letters from feeling completely rigid.
Édifice Aldred (1930). One of Montreal’s most iconic buildings, Aldred presents Art Deco as structural order: its stepped silhouette (a classic setback tower), tough geometry, and vertical rhythm mark it as a clear example of mature Art Deco. Conceived as an office building, it is driven by function, and the typography is shaped by the same priorities: a narrow, clean geometric grotesque that does the job without drawing attention to itself.
Period takeaway: Here, “style” becomes secondary to the system. Typography stops borrowing historical letterforms for their associations and instead borrows architectural constraints: modular construction and the discipline of repeated geometry.
Mid-1930s: Late Art Deco and Streamline Moderne
By the mid-1930s, Montreal’s Art Deco no longer speaks with one accent. The vertical setback tower remains one path, but a more horizontal Streamline Moderne current appears alongside it. In both cases, lettering remains tightly bound to the architectural mass, sometimes even adopting the building’s constructional features almost literally.

Former Musée historique canadien (1935). One of the rarer local examples of that horizontal Streamline Moderne current, the building is almost pure geometry. Decoration is kept to a minimum: a maple-leaf frieze above the former entrance and the stylized figures of the four evangelists.

For typography, what matters is how completely the inscription merges with that white geometric wall. Recessed into the surface, it becomes legible mainly through light and shadow. The letters are geometric enough to match the building, but historical echoes remain. The inscription is built on a geometric grotesque, but forms like the short-crossbar E and the more expansive S echo nineteenth-century monumental lettering in Montreal.
Casa d’Italia (1936). Casa d’Italia offers another example of the same tendency, shifting late Art Deco toward Streamline Moderne. The building is composed of clear, assembled masses, with smooth lines and a composition-focused façade.

The inscription is built to match that architectural logic: an Art Deco grotesque with an avant-garde tone, modular and clearly constructed. Most letters are built from rectangular blocks, with the rounded D echoing the building’s own form—a rectilinear volume interrupted by a curved façade element. As the architecture is made of large, legible masses, the typography answers with similarly solid letters constructed from simple geometric shapes.
Period takeaway. Here again, the style of the inscriptions changes together with the style of the architecture. As late Art Deco shifts toward Streamline Moderne, the lettering becomes more geometric and more tightly integrated with the façade. Any decorative effect now lies not in small details, but in the letters as large geometric masses, much like the buildings themselves.
When Inscriptions Merge With the Building
Between the mid-1910s and the mid-1930s, the style of monumental lettering kept pace with architectural style. Historical reference first returns through Gothic forms and then through renewed classical forms. By mature and late Art Deco, it gives way to a fully geometric language, as inscriptions become increasingly integral to the façade and to the building as a whole.

If Part I (1880s–early 1900s) showed that monumental inscriptions could either mirror the façade or introduce a second voice alongside it, this article shows the balance shifting: the closer architecture moves toward Deco integration, the less room there is for typographic counterpoint, and the more lettering shares the building’s style, geometry, and constructional logic.
From a design perspective, these inscriptions show how context can literally shape typographic form. The lesson extends well beyond architecture. The same logic applies in many other contexts where type must live within a strong carrier, such as storefronts, packaging, exhibition graphics, mastheads, or wayfinding. In stripped-back settings, lettering can absorb the context’s geometry and reinforce its character, since so much of the effect rests on pure form.
Where This Research Goes Next
The next articles will turn to the historical inscriptions of financial institutions, whose buildings and typographic programs played a major role in the life of Montreal and, more broadly, in the economic history of Canada. Another branch of the project will look at ghost signs: less monumental, less regulated, and often freer in tone and self-expression. Together, these next articles will extend the story into other layers of Montreal’s typographic landscape.
Sources and References
Building history and identification
Typographic reference
Image credits
  • Photography: Yulia Gonina.
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