Victoria Bridge is ugly, says architecture prof

Montreal's Victoria Bridge was meant to look like...

     Montreal's Victoria Bridge sure is a durable structure as it's still going strong 155 years after it was built.
   But is it an eyesore?  So thinks architect Jean-Claude Marsan who notes* that the bridge was built by Robert Stephenson with an aim to recreate the Britannia Bridge in Northern Wales about a decade earlier.

... North Wales' Britannia Bridge....

   The Britannia Bridge crosses the Menai Strait, so that explains why streets in the now-demolished Goose Village bore the names Menai and Britannia, with Conway St. undoubtedly being a knockoff of the Welsh town of Conwy. (Forfar St. being the only Goose Village town that bears no connection to Northern Wales).
   The Britannia Bridge was praised as an artistic masterpiece as its stone piers were things of beauty and the four stone lions also added flair with a play poem below reading: "Four fat lions, Without any hair, Two on this side, And two over there."
 Talented architect Francis Thompson, who deserves much of the credit for the Britannia Bridge, did not sign on to help with the Victoria Bridge, the longest bridge in the world at the time of its opening. That was a big loss.

...but should have been built to look like the Brooklyn Bridge..

   Prof Marsan argues that Montreal geography simply did not lend itself to the copy as the St. Lawrence River is much wider than the Menai Strait.
   The Victoria remains an impressive engineering feat but they are not art, he says as the black limestone pillars are the only bit of artistic flair.
   "Their masonry, as well as that of the abutments did not have the distinction, discretion or ingenuity of the Britannia's," says Marsan.
  Marsan said that the Victoria Bridge relied too much on the old world and argues that a more suitable project would have been something like the Brooklyn Bridge.
*Montreal in Evolution 1981 253-254