September 19, 2011 – Come November 2011, Montréal’s Quartier des spectacles is going to get a spiffy (read: extraordinary) new door: Le 2-22. A gateway to the city’s arts and entertainment epicentre and cultural centre all wrapped up into one modern, eco-conscious LEED-certified package, this 55 000 ft2, six-storey building located at 2.22 Sainte-Catherine Street East is destined to become a veritable laboratory of Montréal creativity.
The address is no stranger to culture: the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Laurent has long held an important – and sometimes wild – place in the city’s history. Once lined with businesses and factories, this area took a turn to the wild side in the middle of the 20th century with the arrival of numerous theatres, nightclubs, cinemas and cabarets, providing the multicultural working class a place to kick up their heels and giving life to a new artistic scene on the Main. Flash forward to the 21st century: Le 2-22 at the corner of the former Red Light district constitutes an important part of the city’s urban revitalization plan, a modern cultural centre that embodies the vibrant bohemian spirit of Montréal’s past.
It comes as no surprise that La Vitrine, Montréal’s virtual “window” and box office to all cultural goings-on across the island and beyond (up to an 80-km radius), will set up shop in Le 2-22. Other organizations to call Le 2-22 home include the GALERIE VOX, Imago, Artexte – centre d’information en art, and CIBL radio.
As such, visitors to Le 2-22 will undoubtedly marvel at the bright public atrium in the lobby, or enjoy the vantage on the rooftop bar-terrace. What’s more, they’ll be able to rummage through archives of thousands of visual artistic works, explore the creative vision of contemporary artists, kick back and read, attend a live concert, and even pick up tickets to a last minute show if the spirit takes them.
