On the eve of a provincial election and despite the city’s bad finances, Montreal mayor Camillien Houde asked the provincial government to amend the city’s charter to give him the power to build a subway system. In 1939, proponents thought they were nearing their goal at last. Nevertheless, calls to build a Montreal subway continued. One reason they passed on it was Montreal’s rising unemployment, which had reduced the city’s traffic Neither the city nor the provincial or federal governments chose to fund it. Though subway construction would have provided many jobs, But the momentum was then broken again, by the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the late 1920s, the stars finally aligned when the premier of Quebec, Louis-Alexandre Taschereau,Īpproved plans for a subway. In general, the Montreal authorities simply did not seem very convinced about the need for a subway and so refused to approve it. In part, the outbreak of the First World War impeded major infrastructure projects in Montreal.Īnother reason was the bad state of the city’s finances, which led to its being placed under the trusteeship of Quebec’s provincial government from 1918 to 1921. These problems were the city’s location on an island and the way that Mount Royal obstructed traffic flow.ĭespite all these factors, none of the early proposals came to fruition. The rationales offered at the time for building a subway system included the seriousness of Montreal’s traffic problems. Its economy were growing steadily, and public transportation was a service that the city contracted out to private firms.

The reason for so much interest was the potential for profit. From then through the end of the 1920s, Montreal’s city government received about 15 more proposals for a municipal subway system. At that time, several subway systems were opening Several digital revivals in recent years have returned to Dwiggins's original designs or offered them as alternates.The Montreal Subway Company presented the first known proposal for a subway in Montreal in 1902. In the midst of the geometric vogue, however, his approach proved less popular than hoped, and the typeface was redesigned several years later to more closely resemble the popular Futura. While his opinion of these new designs was less negative, Dwiggins was unsatisfied with the lowercase in existing geometric typefaces and decided to create a font with breaks from pure geometry that could make it more interesting to read. Metro was inspired by a wave of new 'geometric' sans-serif designs such as Futura, which had attracted attention for their basis on simple geometric shapes like circles and straight lines, rather than on the traditional 'grotesque' style of sans-serifs such as Franklin Gothic. Griffith, the company's head of type design, who would manage the production of all his typefaces for the rest of his career. Dwiggins was brought in as a consultant and quickly established a rapport with Chauncey H. Gage, assistant director of typography at Linotype, reviewed the book, and in 1929 he offered to hire Dwiggins to design the 'good' sans-serif he felt was lacking. In 1928, Dwiggins wrote Layout in Advertising, in which he criticized the lack of 'good' sans-serif types available. Metro was Dwiggins's first typeface, which he created at the age of 49 after establishing himself as one of the pre-eminent lettering artists and book designers of the early 20th century. Quick facts: Category, Classification, Designer(s), Foundr.

Metro history typeface influences