Dallegret’s design for Le Drug
Image: People dancing at Le Drug, in the café-restaurant-club section, 1965. Marc Lullier (photographer), copyright 1965. Courtesy of François Dallegret
Credit: ARCMTL collection. Interview conducted in Montreal on September 30, 2015 with François Dallegret by Louis Rastelli, Director of ARCMTL.
Duration: 1:42 min
Excerpt of an interview with François Dallegret, designer and architect, involved in the design of both Le Drug and The New Penelope in the late 1960s.
In the following excerpt, Dallegret recounts how he was commissioned for the design of Le Drug, a very peculiar pharmacy-gallery-boutique-café-restaurant-dance club in downtown Montreal.
Here is the English translation of the original interview conducted in French.
Transcription:
Louis Rastelli: I see you had, not long after or around the same time, a contract to do the interior of Le Drug?
François Dallegret: That’s right, Le Drug, was just before, in 1964, that I did Le Drug. Le Drug was done because I knew, I met William Sofin – Bill Sofin, who was the pharmacist, who already had two or three pharmacies in Montreal. And he wanted to start another one that would be very, very different. And so he had given me the contract to do the Drugstore, Le Drug. So I did everything, I did the interior, the exterior; I did the graphic design, I did—
Louis Rastelli: It’s really different—
François Dallegret: Ah, it was a completely different place, for sure. It was fantastic! It was then published by all sorts of archi[tectural] magazines.
It was on de la Montagne Street, just below Sherbrooke, between Sherbrooke and Maisonneuve. And now there’s no trace left of it, you can’t see anything now. There was a basement that was the restaurant, the first floor was the pharmacy, then at the back, there was a post office, a gallery, etc. I had made a gallery too, it was called Labo-Galerie, in which they presented the work of Lichtenstein, Warhol, all these people that nobody knew in Montreal at the time.
Louis Rastelli: Wow! Was it him [Bill Sofin] who ran the gallery too?
François Dallegret: No, it was Mireille Brisset who ran the gallery. And now she has a gallery outside Montreal. Because, actually, Le Drug only lasted two years, you know?
Louis Rastelli: Ah, ok.