CIBC Tower

The project was initiated by the Canadian Bank of Commerce and announced in 1959. While the building was under construction, the Bank of Commerce merged with the Imperial Bank of Canada to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, effective June 1, 1961. The Imperial Bank abandoned its concurrent plan for a new head office at 612 McGill Street; that building was instead occupied by Crédit foncier franco-canadien, and since 1988 by Quebecor. Completed in 1962, a few months before Place Ville-Marie, the CIBC Tower was the tallest building in Canada and the entire Commonwealth of Nations when it was first built, until being surpassed later that year by Place Ville-Marie where a penthouse was added by the competing Royal Bank for that express purpose. The Consulate of Israel was on the 26th floor of the building and as such, it was sometimes the site of demonstrations related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The consulate has since relocated to Westmount Square in Westmount. ==Architecture==

The tower is exceptionally slender with only of gross floor area per floor, because of a zoning regulation limiting the total building floor area to twelve times the property area. Its façade is more ornamental than that of the average International style tower, with horizontal strips of glass curtain wall alternating with spandrels of various types of stone, including green slate that was quarried in Wales. The building was fully renovated in 1991, and the highly visible CIBC logo at the top was redesigned in 2004 and again in 2013. Inside, levels 15 and 29 are transfer floors; level 16 is a triple-height mechanical floor that is skipped in the floor numbering of the passenger elevators. Levels 42-44 are also mechanical floors; level 45 was originally an indoor observation deck but was closed in the 1970s. The top of the tower are actually an open-air raised partition, built sometime after construction, that hides the rooftop elevator control rooms. Without this extra structure, the actual roof height is , and approximately when counting the elevator penthouse. It is the fifth tallest building in Montreal, but an antenna raises the total height to , the tallest pinnacle in Montreal. Until the end of 2018, French-language radio station CKOI-FM transmitted its 307,000 watt signal from atop the building. The antenna has since been removed. ==Tenants==

• Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce • Minerai de fer Quebec • Euler Hermes • Macquarie Group • Russell Investments • Stikeman Elliott LLP • Vilaron Corporation • Linkeo.com • MNP LLP • ACE Aviation Holdings • Parkland Fuel Corporation ==See also==