McGill Explorations Rnd 1: The Arts Building

So a bunch of us who work-study-hang-out at McGill University have decided to snoop around some of the buildings on Friday evenings as a means of learning more about this awesome and contentious and sprawling place.

Last Friday eve, Alissa, Andrea and I met at the Erotic Gates. We waited for Vijay for a bit but then spoke with him and he couldn't make it so we ventured out on our own. Also, they're not really called the Erotic Gates. They're the Roddick Gates but try saying that really fast. It was kinda cold and we were all a bit tired and had stuff going on that night, so we opted for something fairly manageable: the domed Arts Building at the top of the path, straight in the middle of the McGill downtown campus and which, according to the website, dates back to 1837 when the McGill Board of Governors decided to erect (yikes!) the first new buildings on campus. Phallic much?

And though we'd all been in there at various times, when you stop to look for the details, the Arts Building doesn't disappoint.

As we walked in, I was about to barrel through the vestibule and head up the stairs but Alissa has the eyes of an eagle and she told us to wait and look up. In the entryway, there's a beautiful ornate light fixture with twelve branches, each representing a different astrological sign. Above it, the ceiling is painted black with little stars. It's right there but so easy to overlook!

Walking into the building proper, we took a moment to get our bearings. So many options, do we head upstairs and try to get into the building dome? Should we head down and look for some steam tunels? I tried the door to Moishe Hall - I'd been in before and would have loved to look around again. But to no avail. I guess for some reason McGill decides to keep its most interesting places out of bounds outside of office hours.

So up we went, up the marble and wood-bannered stairs. The second and third floor seemed fairly identical. Locked classrooms and offices and some great wood paneling in the hallways. It was relatively quiet - behind one door, a debate club could be heard rehearsing. All good stuff but a bit boring with no obvious access to neat places but found an interesting back route to the Ferrier Building, a narrow winding hallway between the two buildings filled with portraits and photographs of the Ferrier family, garbed in their finest. Alissa liked the guy who looked like a farmer with a pipe.

Faced with more locked doors, we headed downwards through a fairly unassuming emergency staircase and since all the doors we tried along the way were locked, ended up in the basement, where, at the bottom of the stairs, we came across some very cool looking switch boxes, disconnected and discarded. We played with the switches for a bit and Andrea noticed the fairly extensive mold issue on some of the ceiling pipes.

There was a door right there so we went through. I kept hoping for steam tunnels, but instead, we ended up in the thereat department. Alissa and Andrea spent some time looking at a treasure trove of fabric.

We walked around somewhat aimlessly in hallways decorated with laminated posters from previous theater productions like the Taming of the Shrew and some such. In one room filled with stage preparations, we saw a student working on another's makeup. We asked to come in to look around and they were cool with it but I felt a bit sheepish.

We left and walked around some more in the low-ceilinged warm hallways of the arts department before deciding to explore a set of bathrooms at a lower level of the Arts Building.

Moving on, we came across the tiniest lockers we'd ever seen, essentially suitable for "stacking cats" according to Andrea. Two classrooms were unlocked and we went in and pretended to be smart. On one blackboard there was info about the sociopolitical framework of East-Asia and in the other, there were some very impressive looking formulas though the students had obviously been snacking (despite signs stating clearly that food is not allowed in classrooms!) Andrea left a truth-bomb on the chalkboard and we left.

We headed down a hallway that had a video camera sign and came upon a locked gate barring an incredibly tentatilizing underground hallway leading to another building. But it was locked so we walked on. As we made our way up a flight of stairs, a door opened a mustached gentleman in a uniform stepped out. We said hello, hello and he came back a few minutes later, he turned to us and asked if we "wanted to try something". We said Sure! He used his keycard to let himself back in from whence he'd come and was back a few moments later and offered up a piping hot helping of pork ribs! Apparently he gets them from a restaurant and passes them on to folks on campus who have a craving for some BBQ meat. He left and told us to leave the plate when we were down. Alissa and Andrea chowed down and we then left him a nice note before heading out the exit into the Montreal night.

An hour and a half had passed and we went our separate ways, happy with this first exploration of the McGill campus. The only major gripe was that there were a LOT of locked doors and so we were kept out of appreciating many of the more intriguing aspects of the building. Get it together McGill! Some of us want to explore!

All photos by Alissa!