06/18/08 — Fantastic Ceramic
Inside Céramique Fantastique which contains a very short stretch of clay tiles. No idea when this portion was built, but my guess is that it was installed sometime during the late 1800s before the use of concrete in underground systems became more widespread in Montreal. According to our maps, about 500 meters worth of this sewer was originally lined this way, but only about 30 feet of it remains today. The rest appears to have been replaced with prefabricated concrete pipe a few years ago. With billions of dollars being set aside for upgrading Montreal's crumbling infrastructure, it's only a matter of time before a lot of these old sewers will be lost because of similar treatments.
