Design
A Modernist Gas Station With a New Purpose
How an architecture firm turned a Mies van der Rohe-designed Esso in a remote section of Montreal into the La Station community center.
Most gas stations are architecturally forgettable, but not this one.
A squat, unusually minimalist service station on Nuns’ Island—a sector of Montreal that was exclusively inhabited and farmed by a religious order for nearly 170 years until its sale in 1956—holds the distinction of being the only gas station Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ever built.