Leonard Cohen Tower of Songs mural

The Tower of Songs mural at 1420 Rue Crescent in downtown Montreal is a twenty-storey portrait of Leonard Cohen painted in 2017 on the facade of a building in the Crescent Street entertainment district -- a neighbourhood Cohen himself frequented throughout his life. Created by American street portraitist El Mac (Miles MacGregor) and Montreal artist Gene Pendon, the work was produced by MU, a Montreal non-profit that commissions large-scale public murals, with funding from private donors. The source photograph was taken in 2008 by Leonard's daughter Lorca Cohen.

El Mac rendered Cohen's face in his signature photorealistic style, fedora pulled low, hand over heart, while Pendon incorporated Cohen's 'Unified Heart' symbol -- a motif the poet developed for his own work -- as a recurring element in the background. The completed work is one of the tallest murals in the city and was unveiled roughly a year after Cohen's death on November 7, 2016. Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934 and the city remained central to his life and imagination throughout his career, even during the long years he spent in Los Angeles, on the Greek island of Hydra, or in a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy.

The mural has become one of Montreal's most-visited landmarks and a focal point for fans making the pilgrimage to Cohen's city. A second, smaller Cohen mural was painted at roughly the same time near his home on Plateau-Mont-Royal by artist Kevin Ledo. The Crescent Street mural is the larger and more widely promoted of the two, visible from a considerable distance along the street.