The Saint-Roch Mall: competition with the suburbs

From the 1960s onwards, suburbanization and the arrival of shopping malls brought about the decline of Saint-Joseph Street in the Saint-Roch District. Faced with competition from suburban shopping malls, retailers on this commercial artery wanted to do something to maintain their edge. A section of the road was converted into a pedestrian walkway in 1966, giving rise to the Saint-Roch Mall. In an attempt to attract even more customers, an almost 1,500-foot section of the mall was roofed over in 1974, making Saint-Joseph the longest covered street in the world.

But this strategy didn’t pay off. The Centre-Ville Mall, as it was renamed in the 1980s, attracted more loiterers than shoppers. Shopkeepers and some residents who wanted to recapture the old-time feel of the place lobbied to have the roof removed. It was demolished in two stages between 2000 and 2007. 

When the Laliberté department store closed in 2020, after more than 150 years of operations, it marked the end of an era for this iconic street.