Red brick warehouses and foundry buildings from the 1860s to the early 1900s stand beside new mid rise condo towers along the Lachine Canal.
What Griffintown looks like
The blocks run from Notre-Dame Street down to the Lachine Canal, laid out wide for freight traffic rather than for crowds. Red brick foundries and warehouses stand at the corners, their arched window bays and loading openings still visible under newer signage.
, at the corner of Ann and Ottawa streets, keeps its arched red brick facade behind a row of white planters and artificial turf at the entrance. A few blocks over, the comes to a narrow triangular point at Séminaire and De la Montagne, its 1896 facade squeezed onto an odd shaped lot.
Mid rise and high rise condo towers now fill the gaps between the older buildings, ten to twenty storeys of glass and dark metal set directly against two storey brick walls. On , low industrial sheds still wear corrugated red metal siding next to the new construction.
forms the northern edge, its cafes and small shops sitting under low stone and brick fronts. The Lachine Canal runs along the south side, its stone edge opening into , a turning basin with grass banks and cycling paths. The downtown skyline rises beyond the water, framed between the newer towers on this side of the canal.
Shot in Griffintown
For the Netflix film Single All the Way, a video call scene was shot inside Maman, a café on Rue Notre-Dame Ouest. The café's front counter and window stood in for a coffee shop in Los Angeles.
Single All the Way, 2021
Maman
Played a Los Angeles coffee shop, Los Angeles, California, present day
Maman is a café on Rue Notre-Dame Ouest, with bar seating along its front window where the video call scene plays out. The interior's exposed brick walls and wooden beams pass for a casual Los Angeles coffee shop on screen.
Ancoats' red brick cotton mills and warehouses line the Rochdale Canal in a similar block pattern to Griffintown's own canal side buildings, most of them built between the 1790s and the early 1900s. Both districts kept a working canal front long after the industries that built them closed. A single building held tight in frame reads better than a full block, since Ancoats' mills generally run five to six storeys against the two storey survivors around Griffintown. Try searching red brick canal mill buildings now.
Fulton Market's brick warehouses and loading docks now sit beside glass hotel towers and offices, the same contrast between old industrial fabric and new construction found around Griffintown today. Both districts still use their original loading bays as building entrances. Fulton Market's warehouses run wider than Griffintown's, with cast iron loading docks facing directly onto the sidewalk. The elevated rail line along Lake Street would need to stay out of frame. Try searching brick warehouses loading dock now.
Liberty Village's converted Victorian factory buildings sit among mid rise condo towers, the same combination of converted industrial fabric and new construction found around Griffintown. The scale of the streets and the brick to glass ratio are close matches. Liberty Village's factory blocks tend to run larger and squarer than the narrow triangular lots found around Griffintown, so a wide establishing shot needs careful framing to hide the difference in footprint. Try searching converted factory condo towers now.
