Built between 1926 and 1928 to house the head office of the Royal Bank. It took the new owner three years to find a worthy tenant for the hall.
The Royal Bank of Canada opened its first Montréal branch in 1887 and established its head office there twenty years later. In 1926, it undertook the construction of a new building at 360, rue Saint-Jacques, entrusted to the New York firm York & Sawyer – a recognized specialist in bank headquarters – in collaboration with the Bank's architects. Inaugurated in 1928, the building became a landmark: marble and travertine floor inlaid with a mosaic stamped with the coat of arms of the Royal Bank, Renaissance-inspired coffered ceiling painted by the Italian master Angelo Magnanti, bronze windows gilded with fine gold. In 1962, the Royal Bank moved its head office to Place Ville-Marie but kept a branch there until 2012, when it left the premises for good.
Owner of the building since 2004, Georges Coulombe — converted to heritage restoration after acquiring his first old buildings in the 1980s — has been looking for three years for a tenant capable of inhabiting the banking hall without distorting it. He finally chose Crew Collectif & Café, a young Montréal company which opened its own café-workspace in May 2016. Architect Henri Cleinge kept the marble floor, restored the coffered ceiling, transformed the original ticket windows into glass work alcoves and saved eight of the historic bronze ticket windows. The counter serves products from Montréal artisans — Comptoir Rhubarbe, Patrice Pâtissier, Hof Kelsten, Dispatch Coffee — under a 13.7 meter high ceiling.