Last year, Constable Graham Walker of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police was asked to research the history for their 10-year anniversary. Graham promptly fell down the rabbit hole and his journey has taken him to UBC Special Collections, City of Vancouver Archives, BC Hydro Archives, and the Vancouver Police Museum. Graham’s first surprise was that the history of transit police goes back far longer than 2005 when a recommendation by the BC Association of Chiefs of Police led to the creation of the Transit Police. In fact, the earliest record showing the appointment of a special constable for the BC Electric Railway dates back to 1904.
But Graham wasn’t calling me with a history of transit, he had uncovered a 100-year-old murder mystery in war-time Vancouver.
Graham Walker standing where the 1915 murder took place near Willow and 6th
On March 19, 1915, Charles Painter, 34, was working the night shift for BCER. The special constable was patrolling the railway tracks at 6th and Willow when he saw a man carrying a bag of what he thought was wire stolen from the overhead trolley wire. He struggled with the thief, who managed to get his gun and Painter was shot in the stomach with his own weapon.
“Everything comes full circle,” says Graham who is also 34. “I’ve worked overtime shifts myself where we were going up and down Fraser Street looking for trolley wire thieves.”
Nowadays, transit police work foot patrol in pairs for protection, but in 1915 Charles was alone, and wandered for about an hour before he found help. He was able to give a statement to police, but later died from blood poisoning.
Painter was unmarried and lived at 1543 West 3rd Street. There’s not much known about him—Graham found out that he was born in 1881 in Ireland, and had served in the British Army before coming to Canada in 1908.
“They didn’t have any suspects at first, but a few years later there was an article in the Province saying this man Frank Van der Heiden was being tried in Seattle for murdering two people and was of interest in the murder of Charles Painter,” says Graham. According to the article, Van der Heiden, who had been in Vancouver at the time of Painter’s murder, told a soldier he was locked up with that he was responsible for the constable’s death. Van der Heiden was caught with a large sum of cash, and according to the article, the money was believed to have been provided by the German government for the purpose of persuading soldiers to desert.
Painter’s murder is still officially unsolved, and his death went unrecognized until Graham and his research. Now his name has been added to the Honour Roll of the British Columbia Law Enforcement Memorial in Victoria, and Graham is presently trying to secure the funds to have a headstone placed on his unmarked grave at Mountain View Cemetery.
“Something we struggle with at our work place is lack of history and culture and you look at Victoria and New Westminster and they have this proud heritage,” says Graham. “So to have this now is important.”
BCER terminal at Hastings and Carrall in 1912. CVA M-14-71
Since this is my last blog for the year, I thought I’d put together a list of my top 10 favourite FB pages. My criteria is pretty simple: the page has to have a strong Greater Vancouver flavour, there has to be a historical element, and the page has to post reasonably often and with original postings.
The Archives does an amazing job as our official keeper and promoter of Vancouver’s history. But most importantly the Archives took the step a few years ago of digitizing tens of thousands of photos and making high res versions freely accessible to anyone who wants them. They also have a great blog.
I started this page a couple of years ago and it has grown into a mixture of curated material, photos and original posts (you really don’t know what you are getting from one day to the next because I’m never sure myself).
Most long time Vancouverites have at least one Foncie photo in their album, and his photos really touch a chord and say a lot about our history. Foncie took his first photo in 1934 and his last in 1979. He was the last of the street photographers
This is a local business run by Will Woods (shown wearing cool hat). Will has shaken up the idea of the walking tour, added some theatre and shows the sketchy side of Vancouver to locals and tourists. His FB posts reflect this side of Vancouver.
For keeping Vancouver’s heritage buildings as an issue, for publishing the top 10 watch list of endangered buildings and for putting on great events that keep us interested in heritage. You need to follow this page.
The North Vancouver Museum and Archives has been fundraising this year for a new museum that would live at the foot of Lonsdale. They’ve also ramped up their postings on FB and shared some really fascinating bits of local history and photos for people on both sides of the Inlet.
Not all the photos are of burning buildings, some are shots of old equipment, trucks, parades, old Vancouver and heritage fire halls. And, if you’re in need of some eye candy pop over to The Hall of Flame calendar page — it’s okay it’s for the children!
Through the annual heritage house tour, lectures series, walking tours, Places that Matter and their collateral, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation does an amazing job of keeping heritage important and fun. Follow this site for information about grants and events.
I can’t say enough good things about Vancouver Then. Jeremy Hood posts consistently and often and he puts a huge amount of work and thought into his posts and photos about Vancouver. My favourites are his then and now posts that show how much we have changed, or in some cases, how much we haven’t.
Noted fiction author Caroline Adderson started this page a couple of years ago and has attracted a huge following of people who are just as outraged as she is by the demolition of character houses in Vancouver. Her relentless beating on City Hall has had real results and her page was the basis for Vancouver Vanishes, a book of essays with contributors such as Michael Kluckner, John Atkin, Kerry Gold, and me.
If I have missed any of your favourite pages, please leave a note in the comment section below!
When I was researching my 2007 book At Home with History I spent most of my life at the Vancouver Archives and on the 7th floor of the Vancouver Public Library. Now, instead of trekking downtown, much of the information is available to me here at home.
Today, the digital world just got a bit better with the launch of three very cool new online toys.
Goad’s Fire Insurance Map 1912 showing the DTES
Goad’s Fire Insurance Map
Vancouver Archives has made the Vanmap even more exciting by adding a layer from a 1912 Fire Insurance Plan. Once onto Vanmap click on aerial imagery and you’ll see Goad’s Fire Insurance map. Michael Kluckner took me for a digital tour of his Grandview neighbourhood of 1912 where we found an “Isolation Hospital,” a huge estate called Wilga, and Brook House, complete with its turret. I zoomed into the DTES with CVA archivist Heather Gordon and we could see all the 1912 businesses and brothels along Alexander Street as well as a sawmill and police station, and the original shoreline shown in dashed lines.
The map is colour coded—yellow represents wood framed buildings and the pink are brick and stone—mostly in the downtown area. See Sue Bigelow’s post for a clear description of all its uses.
Heritage Site Finder Map
Heritage Site Finder Interactive Map
I’ve spent hours playing on this interactive map by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. The map lists buildings and landmarks found on the Heritage Register—(and eventually other buildings not on the register) and there are around 2,300, many with photos and descriptions. It’s incredibly easy to navigate and you can search by address, zoom into an area, or just click on houses at random. This is a work in progress, so if you click on a building and can’t find a photo, keep trying. Better still if you have old photos of the building and information, send them to the VHF so they can add them. Eventually it will also be possible to add long demolished buildings so we can see how Vancouver looked through a historical filter.
Historic Building Permits online database
You’d think answering a question like ‘when was my house built?’ would be simple. It’s not. Or at least it wasn’t until Heritage Vancouver Society started to transcribe thousands of building permits (currently at 33,000) from the Vancouver Archives prior to 1929—the year Point Grey and South Vancouver amalgamated into the City of Vancouver. Before these permits were online—and it is a volunteer-dependent work-in-progress—you would have to go to the Archives and look through pages and pages of handwritten ledgers brought out to you in huge bound books. With the online database you can pull up every house built in a block, you can search for every building designed by a certain architect, or most impressive and simplest of all, you can find out when your house was built.
In February heritage men told us their favourite building and the one building we should have saved. To keep the world in balance, I’ve asked the same question of women working in and with heritage—our answers may surprise you.
My current favourite house is 3825 West 39th Avenue, built in 1937 by Jack Wood, who was the builder responsible for all the Dunbar castle houses. The house he built for himself next door and featured in the Vancouver Sun at 3815 West 39th Avenue was demolished in early March with almost no reclamation of materials. In the article John Atkin describes the style of the Dunbar castles as “a variation of the French Normandy style popular after World War I. The turret is the grain silo of the original (French) farm house repurposed to make a grand entrance.”
I’d argue that 3825 West 39th is the prettier of the sisters because of the shingle roof and the Tudor elements. Like the Dorothies, which were saved from demolition last year, this house just lights up the street. It seems to exude stories. But not for long. As I was walking past the house this morning, I met a pair of surveyors who confirmed it’s slated for demolition.
Caroline’s runner-up for favourite “house” still standing is 3492 ½ West 35th. It’s a sort of rondavel constructed out of firewood, driftwood, plywood, cinderblocks, tarpaper and stones, with fanciful ornamentation. “I haven’t been inside because, as you can see, no “gurls” are “aloud”.
The one building that never should have been destroyed?
The Beaconsfield at 884 Bute Street is one of a number of West End apartment buildings built in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Every one of these blocks has its own idiosyncrasies and surprises, but I love the Arts and Crafts balconies on the otherwise very-Victorian Beaconsfield, and the way the building integrates with the park-like traffic-calmed block of Bute outside its entrance.
The one building that never should have been destroyed?”
Glencoe Lodge in 1932 CVA Hot N3
The Glencoe Lodge at Georgia and Burrard was a residential hotel built by B.T. Rogers in 1906 and managed by Jean Mollison, who was known a the “grand Chatelaine,” because according to a 1951 newspaper article, she had previously managed the Chateau Lake Louise. Under her guidance, Glencoe Lodge attracted a highly exclusive clientele, even more so than the C.P.R.’s Hotel Vancouver. The Lodge was demolished in the early 1930s, but if it had lasted longer, I can’t help but wonder if it might have become part of a really interesting development on that corner.
Eve Lazarus is the author of Sensational Vancouver and the person behind Every Place has a Story.
Favourite Vancouver building?
With Aaron Chapman on the 2014 VHF heritage house tour
It was a huge thrill to get inside Casa Mia on the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s house tour last year. Built smack in the middle of the Depression from the proceeds of rum running, this old girl still has the nursery with original drawings from Walt Disney artists, it’s own gold leaf covered ballroom with a spring dance floor, a gold swan for a faucet, and art deco his and hers washrooms.
The one building that never should have been destroyed?
Joe Fortes Beach Avenue cottage CVA BuP111
We honoured Joe Fortes with a fountain in Alexandra Park, but how much more awesome would it have been, if we’d kept his house? Not only would it have been one of the oldest structures in Vancouver, it could have made both a great little museum for black history in Vancouver and for the houses that once dotted the water side of Beach Avenue. Instead it went up in flames in 1928.
The hidden courtyard in Chinatown is an enclosure created by the five historic buildings that surround it, two of which were once opium factories. Chinatown is going through a tremendous amount of change right now, but when you walk into the courtyard, it’s as though time has stopped. The courtyard is not accessible to the public, but you can see it if you take the Sins of the City Vice, Dice and Opium Pipes tour.
The one building that never should have been destroyed?
502 Alexander Street, ca.1905 CVA 152-124
502 Alexander St. Aside from the fact that the glass-and-steel monstrosity that replaced it is completely jarring in that particular location, 502 Alexander Street was the second-oldest residence in the city. The historic East End buildings that survived the slum clearances of the 1960s are once again being lost at an astonishing rate, and it is shocking that one of the earliest remaining buildings from the post-fire period was demolished without city council making any effort to preserve it.
Stevie Wilson is a writer and historical researcher specializing in public history. She is a contributor to Vancouver Confidential, and a regular columnist for Scout Magazine
Favourite Vancouver building?
Stevie Wilson at the Bloedel Conservatory
Bloedel Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth Park is a stunning example of 60s modernism (so space-age!) and a fun, interactive place to visit all year round. It also boasts the title of being the first large triodetic dome conservatory in the country, with a design that was influenced heavily by Buckminster Fuller’s larger Biosphere from Expo ’67 in Montreal. It’s definitely one of our city’s most unique structures.
The one building that never should have been destroyed?
The second Hotel Vancouver demolished in 1949. Although the current iteration is beautiful, there was just something so elegant and ornate about the second version – it featured a completely different architectural style in keeping with the sensibilities of the time.
Its location at Georgia and Granville remains one of the biggest intersections in the city, so it’s interesting to imagine how the hotel’s presence might have affected the modern architectural culture of the downtown core if it were still standing.
I came across this photo* of downtown Vancouver in 1924 while I was playing on Vancouver Archive’s site a few years ago. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was looking at. There’s the Vancouver Block sticking up in the background—you can see the familiar clock—but check out all those other amazing buildings: the Strand Theatre, the Birks Building and the Second Hotel Vancouver—all missing from our streetscape less than half-a-century later.
The hotel was the first to go. Built by the CPR in 1916, you can see some of the incredible detail of the architecture in the photo (above). It even had a trellised outdoor roof café. It was all too grand for Vancouver apparently, because when the third (and existing) Hotel Vancouver was finished, its days were numbered. Eatons bought the site in 1949, pulled down the building and it remained an empty lot for the next two decades. The lot became the Eaton Centre in 1974, then Sears, and now it’s Nordstrom, a US department store.
Across the road from the second Hotel Vancouver was the beautiful old Birks Building. Well not that old really, only 61 in 1974. She was killed off to make way for the Scotia Tower and ugly Vancouver Centre (you know the one with London Drugs on Granville and Georgia).
The Georgia Viaduct knocked out a lot of buildings in 1971 including Hogan’s Alley and Vie’s Chicken and Steakhouse.
Urban Renewal:
The photo (above) was shot in 1971 and appears inSensational Vancouver’s Walk on the Wild Side chapter to illustrate “urban renewal”—the City of Vancouver’s excuse for trying to demolish Strathcona and Chinatown.
It’s also one of the few photos that I’ve been able to find that shows that corner of Main and Union Street.
Vancouver Archives allows you to zoom into the photo which I’ve done in the inset. The building on the corner is still there. The little building next door at 207 Union (recently re-numbered 209) now houses the Jimi Hendrixshrine.Before it was levelled into a parking lot and later turned into an extension of the shrine—the real 209 Union Street had a fascinating history.
Mattlo’s Bootlegging Joint:
In 1937 the house was Louis Mattlo’s bootlegging joint. There’s a great photo in the Vancouver Sun showing Mattlo arrested and hauled off to jail after trying to break into his padlocked house with a screwdriver.
A city magistrate had come up with an innovative idea of ordering police to padlock three of the homes of the most notorious bootleggers. Unfortunately, police had locked in the Mattlo family’s tabby and had to go back in to rescue the cat. And what they didn’t bank on, was that the families would elect to stay inside the padlocked homes.
Uniformed officers were posted outside each of the homes to help facilitate the departure of the family members should they change their mind. It took over two weeks.
In the late 1940s, the house became Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, a famous Hogan Alley landmark operated by Vie and Robert Moore for more than 30 years.
Vie’s became a favourite destination for visiting black performers including Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. Local legend has it that Nora Hendrix worked at Vie’s and that her grandson, rocker Jimi Hendrix played there.
When I first started researching Alvo von Alvensleben some years ago I made several road trips to see how many of the buildings associated with him had withstood the bulldozer. Happily many did. His private home (1910-1913) at the time a 20-acre estate in Kerrisdale, is now the “old residence” at the Crofton Girl’s School, the Wigwam Inn is owned by the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, the Dominion Building still dominates the corner at West Hastings and Cambie, his hunting lodge in North Vancouver is a private residence, and houses that he built for employees in Pitt Meadows, Port Mann and Issaquah, Washington still exist.
Taken from the Sylvia Hotel, 2013. CVA 2013-002.1
1409 Nicola Street:
But I was intrigued by one that didn’t.
In 1909 the city directory lists Alvensleben’s home as 1409 Nicola Street, but when I went to track down the address, I landed on the grassy promenade of Beach Avenue with nary a house in sight.
It turns out that the water side of Beach Avenue was lined with houses right up to the 1950s. A newspaper article from 1950, reports that the City expropriated 14 sea-side houses in 1929 with the intention of creating our current scenic drive from English Bay to the Burrard Street Bridge.
“Depression, war and housing shortages have since thwarted the Park Board’s scheme to tear down the houses and landscape the property into a seashore drive which would give motorists a panoramic view of English Bay and West End residents several blocks of new ornamental parkland.”
It looks like 1409 Nicola may have been one of these houses situated between Bidwell and Nicola, at least there was still a listing for it in 1950—the only house over Beach Drive.
Then I read a memoir by Martin Nordegg called “The Possibilities of Canada are Truly Great,” written about the period from 1906 to 1924. Nordegg writes that he was sent to British Columbia in 1909 to check up on Alvensleben on behalf of a German Bank. “This German” he calls him, “had induced German aristocrats to entrust him with large amounts of capital for investment. His name was Alvo von Alvensleben. His residence looked like a castle on the Rhine with turrets and bastions.”
Joe Fortes and his sweet little cabin at the foot of Bidwell Street. Demolished in 1922. CVA BuP111, colourized by Canadian Colour
Beach Avenue Houses:
I went to the Vancouver Archives to look for pictures of these houses. Couldn’t find one. And then a few weeks back I saw a picture of Carol Haber in the Vancouver Sun holding a 1913 photograph recently donated to the Archives. Heather Gordon, Archives Manager, was kind enough to send me this photo—and for a while I thought I had Alvo’s house–the one at the foot of Nicola as described by Nordegg. Unfortunately the photo was taken at the top of what’s now the Sylvia Hotel, so it couldn’t be Nicola, but it’s a great photo and maybe some more will start to emerge.
Heather says that the Archives are posting a blog about the area in the next little while. Can’t wait to learn more about that area. Does anyone remember these houses or have any photos of them?
On February 23, Jennifer Clay gave an A to Z workshop to home owners wanting to research the history of their homes. Jennifer has written a guest blog based on her presentation.
Jennifer Clay in front of her 1926 heritage house
By Jennifer Clay
I live in a 1926 heritage home in North Vancouver, and while I had a vague idea of the previous occupants of our home, the key word is ‘vague’. So when my daughter Kristen, 11, was looking for ideas for her heritage fair project, I suggested she research the history of our home.
Our first stop was the local archives where we were shown the City Directories (1871 to 1996). These directories are like an old fashioned “411.ca”—you can look up your address, find out the name of the occupant, his profession, his employer and the name of his wife (after 1934).
The City Directories are just one useful resource at the Archives. You can also look for Building Permits, Property Tax Assessments and Fire Insurance Maps to determine the name of the owner, the type and value of structures built on your property and the relevant dates. You may also be able to find photos of your house, its occupants or your neighbourhood. The Vancouver Public Library has over 90,000 historical photographs. BC Archives has five million, Vancouver Archives about 1.5 million, while the North Vancouver Museum and Archives has a searchable database of 15,000 photos.
If you wish to trace the genealogy of the previous residents of your house, you can search for their names in the 1852, 1901 and 1911 Canadian Census documents, and can also find a wide range of birth, marriage and death certificates for Vital Events which took place in BC and elsewhere in Canada.
By doing all this and more, I was able to trace the family of the first owner (John Bull) back to Britain in the early 1800’s. I found out that he left his home in Ontario in the 1860’s, went to Brooklyn, married the (Catholic) daughter of Irish immigrants, had seven children—including twin girls—and in the 1890’s, brought his family to the Slocan region of BC to seek his fortune. It’s unclear if he found either gold or copper during his 20 year stay, but we did learn that he lost one of his twin girls, Henrietta Maud, on August 8, 1904 in a drowning accident. When my daughter and I figured this out, we both felt a sense of loss ourselves, as by this time, we felt an emotional tie to this pioneering family who once inhabited the same space that we now inhabit. After their stay in the Kootenays, the family came to North Vancouver, where John Bull started a Coal and Building Supply business, built our house at the age of 75, worked until he was 82 and died at 83.
I’m not done yet. It’s my goal to find a photo of John Bull, be it through his descendants or through the archives of the Slocan Valley. It remains to be seen if I will be successful but it has already been a fun and very rewarding journey.
Painter’s murder is still officially unsolved, and his death went unrecognized until Graham and his research. Now his name has been added to the Honour Roll of the British Columbia Law Enforcement Memorial in Victoria, and Graham is presently trying to secure the funds to have a headstone placed on his unmarked grave at Mountain View Cemetery.
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Vancouver Archives
