No Montreal spot offered a more evocative taste of rustbelt glory than the Guy St. bridge over nowhere, a 2,000 foot overpass built in 1931 and demolished in 1987. The bridge offered a heart-piercing view of a downtown skyline contrasted with the gritty train yards below, later replaced by a barren expanse of of mud, rocks, dandelions and strewn junk.
Magic Montreal moment: treading loftily in piercing winds on an afternoon winter sunset above ice-and-snow-covered mud to the Golden Square Mile from a down-and-the-heels Little Griff Henry pockmarked with shabby landmarks like the Bar Victoire and the Salvation Army.
A similar span a few blocks east at Mountain failed to deliver the same experience as the skyline view was less impressive.The bridges were built to get people and vehicles over the train tracks that led to Chaboillez station but those tracks were eventually pulled after the CP and CNR went union into Central Station.
From then on those those wandering over the bridge from below St. Antoine to near Notre Dame were left to existentially ask: why am I on a bridge here when there's nothing for it to span? The lands below were slowly filled up with housing and now there are no fields, no bridges, just memories.