Ron Thom

The 1981 PNE Prize Home

by Eve Lazarus on August 20, 2022

Architect Ron Thom designed a 4,000 sq.ft. prize home for the PNE in 1981. It resided in South Surrey.

In 1981, British Columbia was in the throes of a recession, house prices were plummeting, and first-time buyers were looking at interest rates of over 20%.

Architectural offices were closing, and even a starchitect like Ron Thom was searching for clients. So, a commission to design the PNE prize home likely would have been very welcome.

Ron Thom outside his PNE designed home — Ralph Bower photo, Vancouver Sun, 1981.

West Coast Modern:

Thom had cut his teeth designing more than 60 mid-century modern homes mostly on the North Shore, but had moved onto work on commercial buildings such as the BC Electric Building in Vancouver, and after he opened an office in Toronto, designed the Massey College, the Shaw Festival Theatre and the Toronto Zoo.

For the PNE, he designed a bright and airy home of close to 4,000 square feet—more than twice the size of earlier prize homes. Behind the solid oak front door was a dramatic glass-roofed atrium which soared up from the courtyard entrance to the roof. Short flights of stairs led to the living areas, a self-contained master bedroom was placed at the top of the house and four bedrooms below. It was likely frightening for people used to traditional houses with small rooms, two floors and a basement.

Financial Problems:

It was also quite complex and costly to build on top of the cost of the Coquitlam lot which had been purchased as its designated resting place.

Batex Industries, the builder, ran into financial trouble and liens were placed on the house by several contractors, and by Thom.

PNE staff thought it too modern for the average family, and according to a Vancouver Sun story, the winners took the $250,000 cash option and stayed in North Vancouver. Ron Thom’s PNE house eventually sold for $2,500 and shipped to a lot in South Surrey. It was replaced in 2015 by a glaringly modern two-storey home in 2015.

Ron Thom's replacement house — Prize winners thought the Ron Thom-designed PNE house was too modern in 1981. I wonder what they’d think of its 2005 replacement!

This year’s PNE house is a 3,400 sq-foot, three-bedroom house in Langley. Need more bedrooms? No worries. The main bathroom will divide into at a couple more and you can Air B&B out the media room.

PNE 2022 prize home — The 2022 PNE Prize home in Langley

For more information about Ron Thom and other mid-century modern architects, check out Sensational Vancouver. And, for more stories like this one see: Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Tags PNE Prize Home, Ron Thom

BC Binning’s Missing Murals

by Eve Lazarus on February 5, 2022

BC Binning wasn’t just an important artist; as a teacher, he influenced architects such as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth. Where are his missing murals?

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

BC Binning’s mural still decorates the old BC Hydro Building, which was converted into condos in the early 1990s. Doris Fiedrich photo, 2017.

Artist and teacher:

BC Binning wasn’t just an important artist; as a teacher, he influenced architects such as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth. His tiled murals are still outside the BC Hydro building (now the Electra Building) on Burrard Street, as well as in and outside his West Vancouver house which was designated a heritage building in 1999 and a National Historic Site in 2001.

BC Binning’s home, interior mural. Parks Canada photo

Murals:

What you can’t see are the murals that he created for the old Vancouver Public Library on Robson Street, or the 76.2 metre-long mural he created in 1956 to wrap around the CKWX building on Burrard Street. That building was replaced by a 20-storey condo tower just 33 years later.

BC Binning’s mural decorated this building from 1956 until it was demolished in 1989. Selwyn Pullen photo, 1956

The University of British Columbia came up with most of the $8,000 needed to rescue a 7.3 metre section of the CKWX mural, while Andrew Todd, a Vancouver conservator was charged with prying Binning’s blue, green and yellow mosaic off the wall, tile by tile, and placing it on a rolled canvas for storage at UBC. “Oh my god it was tough to save,” Todd told me. “It was an abstract arrangement of one-inch glass tiles from Venice, much like his mural on the BC Hydro Building. And it was huge, maybe 20 feet by 10 feet (six by three metres) in sections.”

The old Vancouver Public Library on Robson. Vancouver Archives photo ca.1972

The saved section of the mural was to be installed on a proposed studio-resources building, which was to house the university’s fine arts program. The building was never built, and the mural has apparently disappeared.

Tags Andrew Todd, Arthur Erickson, BC Binning, BC Hydro building, Electra, Fred Hollingsworth, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullen; CKWX, Vancouver Exposed

West Coast Modern Architecture

by Eve Lazarus on June 15, 2018

There is a chapter in Sensational Vancouver called West Coast Modern which explains the connections between artists and architects and the West Coast Modern movement in Vancouver.

Last week I wrote about Selwyn Pullan’s photography exhibition currently on display at the West Vancouver Museum. I focused on his shots of West Coast Modern houses now almost all obliterated from the landscape.

But Selwyn also did a lot of commercial photography and one of his largest clients was Thompson Berwick Pratt, the architecture firm headed up by Ned Pratt who hired and mentored some of our most influential West Coast Modern architects. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Paul Merrick, Barry Downs and Fred Hollingsworth all cut their teeth at TBP, and BC Binning consulted on much of the art that went along with the buildings.

BC Electric from the back cover of Sensational Vancouver. Courtesy Selwyn Pullan, 1957.

Ned Pratt’s crowning achievement was winning the commission to design the BC Electric building on Burrard Street—a game changer in the early 1950s. While the building is still there, now dwarfed by glass towers and repurposed into the Electra—a few of the firm’s other creations are long gone.

There was the Clarke Simpkins car dealership built in 1963 on West Georgia that demonstrated Vancouver’s growing fascination with neon.

CKWX (News 1130) building designed at 1275 Burrard in 1956, demolished 1989. Replaced by The Ellington. Selwyn Pullan photo 1956

Our love for neon also showed up in the former CKWX headquarters at 1275 Burrard Street. According to the Modern Movement Architecture in BC (MOMO) the building won the Massey Silver Medal in 1958. “This skylit concrete bunker was home to one of Vancouver’s major radio stations until the late 1980s. The glassed-in entrance showcased wall mosaics by BC Binning, their blue-gray tile patterns symbolizing the electronic gathering and transmission of information.”

The building is long gone, replaced by a 20-storey condo building called The Ellington in 1990.

The Ritz Hotel at 1040 West Georgia was originally a 1912 apartment building. It was remodeled into a hotel when this photo was taken in 1956 and demolished in 1982. It was replaced by the 22-storey hideous gold Grosvenor building. Selwyn Pullan photo

I wonder what happened to the murals?

The Exhibition runs until July 14.

Top photo: Clarke Simpkins Dealership, 1345 West Georgia. Built 1963, demolished 1993. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1963.

Tags Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Binning, BC Electric Building, CKWX, Clarke Simpkins, Electra, Fred Hollingsworth, Ned Pratt, Paul Merrick, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Thompson Berwick Pratt, West Vancouver Museum

West Coast Modern on Display

by Eve Lazarus on June 28, 2015

There is a chapter on West Coast Modern Artists and Architects in Sensational Vancouver.

If you love West Coast modern like I do, check out the art and architecture exhibit at the West Vancouver Museum this summer.

Work from all the greats is there—Fred Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Gordon Smith, Len Norris, Jack Shadbolt, Bill Reid and Zoltan Kiss and documented by photographers Selwyn Pullan and John Fulker.

I had spent time in the houses of Barry Downs, Ned Pratt and Selwyn Pullan while writing Sensational Vancouver and it was great to see their work highlighted. I didn’t know that Hollingsworth and Pratt designed furniture, Kiss made pottery, or that cartoonist Len Norris was originally an architectural draftsman.

Len Norris, 1955. Reproduced from the original

Ned Pratt of Thompson Berwick Pratt, may be the most important architect to come out of Vancouver. He hired and mentored some of the most influential architects of the time—Erickson, Thom, Downs, Hollingsworth all cut their teeth at TBP.

Pratt’s crowning achievement was winning the commission to design the B.C. Electric building on Burrard Street—a game changer in the early 1950s.

Fred Herzog photo of B.C. Electric building in 1959

Pratt built his own home on an acre lot in the British Properties in the ‘50s.

When Peter Pratt, also an architect, took over the house after his father’s death, it had started to leak and rot. “I don’t know how many times I heard ‘it’s a tear down Pratt you can’t save it’,” he said in Sensational Vancouver. “This is our home, it’s not so much an asset, it’s our home. It has a sense of place.”

Peter Pratt in front of the mural designed by Ned Pratt and Ron Thom made from paper, coloured dyes and fibreglass. Eve Lazarus photo, 2015

Peter not only saved much of the family home, he built his own post-and-beam home right next door.

Hollingsworth just died a few months ago at age 98. His wife Phyllis still lives in the North Vancouver house he designed in1946.

Barry Downs, who was recently awarded the Order of Canada, still lives with his wife Mary in the gorgeous West Vancouver house he designed for them in 1979.

Eve Lazarus and Barry Downs. Tom Carter photo, 2015

A huge Gordon Smith painting hangs in the dining room. The artist is a good friend of the Downs’ and lives nearby in a house designed by Arthur Erickson.

Ironically, Erickson, who was probably the most famous of all, chose not to design his own house, but bought a large corner lot with a small cottage and a garage in Point Grey out of which he created a 900-square-foot home, and lived there for 52 years.

Arthur Erickson. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1972

The West Vancouver Museum is at 680-17^th Street in West Vancouver. It’s located inside the Gertrude Lawson House, a 1940 stone house built in the Colonial Revival Style.

Tags Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, B.C. Electric building, Barry Downs, Bill Reid, Fred Hollingsworth, Gordon Smith, Jack Shadbolt, John Fulker, Len Norris, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Sensational Vancouver, Thompson Berwick Pratt, West Coast modern, Zoltan Kill

The incredible photography of Selwyn Pullan

by Eve Lazarus on August 16, 2014

Selwyn Pullan, photographer — Selwyn Pullan in his studio, 2008. Kenneth Dyck photo

I’ve been posting pictures of the BC Electric Building on Facebook this week, but I haven’t posted this one—it’s on the back of Sensational Vancouver and in the chapter on West Coast Modern. The photo was shot by Selwyn Pullan in 1957, the same year BC Electric completed this ground breaking piece of architecture.

While Ned Pratt and Ron Thom were designing the BC Electric building and other west coast modern architects such as Arthur western living 1961 Erickson and Barry Downs were producing buildings full of glass and angles and natural materials built to expand into spaces in ways unseen before, it was Selwyn Pullan who captured their vision.

Selwyn studied under Ansel Adams at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, and after moving back to Vancouver he became a sought after commercial photographer, working for magazines such as Western Homes and Living, Macleans and Architectural Digest.

“I just look at the house and photograph it,” he told me. “I don’t have any preconceptions when I photograph, it’s a journalistic assignment not a photographic one.”

Many of Selwyn’s photos are in my book, and so is he. He’s over 90 now and still living in the North Vancouver house he bought in 1952. Pullan asked Fred Hollingsworth to design a carport. The finished structure looks more like a plane than a garage, and that’s interesting not just from an architectural point of view, but because he and Hollingsworth used to make model airplanes together as teens. Pullan says Hollingsworth still does.

Selwyn Pullan's studio. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1960 — Selwyn Pullan’s studio. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1960

In 1960 when Pullan needed a multi-purpose studio and darkroom for his growing photographing business, he sought out Hollingsworth again. Rather then add another room to the house, the architect created a covered passageway that led from the house and flowed down the slope of the property. He designed a two-level studio with floor-to-ceiling windows and concrete floors that blend seamlessly with the landscape.It was here in 1969 that Selwyn shot the paintings for Lawren Harris’s book, from the artist’s early days with the Group of Seven through to his abstract period in Vancouver. Selwyn refused to shoot them anywhere except his studio and only when he was alone. The paintings would be trucked to his studio in batches, taken away and a new group brought in. Harris, who lived on ritzy Belmont Avenue in Vancouver, died the following year. Cover image by DRK Design. To see more of his work, see Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Mid-Century West Coast Modern, Douglas & McIntyre, 2012.

Tags Ansel Adams, Architectural Digest, Art Center School, Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Electric, Fred Hollingsworth, Lawren Harris, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Sensational Vancouver, Western Homes and Living

West Coast Modern and Architect Barry Downs

by Eve Lazarus on July 5, 2014

Barry Downs architect designed his gorgeous West Coast Modern house in West Vancouver in 1979. He lived there until his death in July 2022 at 92.

From Sensational Vancouver

Barry Downs and the West Coast modern house he designed in 1979

Barry Downs house sits on top of a cliff 120 feet above West Vancouver’s Garrow Bay. The house is almost invisible from the busy street and built on multiple levels, with lots of glass that connects the indoors with the out.

Rapidly disappearing:

Most people don’t think of these gorgeous mid-century homes as “heritage,” but many are listed on the Heritage Register. Because they are typically small houses on large view lots, they are rapidly disappearing.

Barry figures we’ve lost about 50 percent of our mid-century housing stock.

Each step through the Downs’ house is like a journey of discovery. A window in the bathroom looks out onto the forest. Another window gives a view of Bowen Island, and another a glimpse of the rocky exterior. But it’s not until you step into the dining room that you can truly understand the brilliance of Barry’s design. The Strait of Georgia, Vancouver Island and the B.C. Coast line leaps out through floor to ceiling glass windows, and just for a moment it’s disorienting, like being suspended in space.

Marine Drive, West Vancouver. Barry Downs photo

Focus on the landscape:

“To me, it’s all to do with emotion, and you derive that from the building and its setting,” says Barry. “The focus for me has always been the landscape, the garden, the seasonal world.”

Barry trained at Thompson, Berwick and Pratt and worked with some of the city’s most exciting and imaginative architects. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick and B.C. Binning, at one time all worked under the guidance of Ned Pratt. Barry left to form a partnership with Fred Hollingsworth in 1963, and six years later he and Richard Archambault launched their own company with residential houses as their mainstay.

Barry Downs architect

“We built on narrow lots with simple and affordable post and beam houses. We designed houses that pushed up through the trees, that revolved around the idea of the big room, surrounded by the garden, and the view of the changing seasons,” he says.

Barry, a softly spoken man now in his 80s, is as low key as the houses that he designs. He’d just like to see more of them remain.

Tags Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Barry Downs, Berwick Pratt, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick, Richard Archambault, Ron Thom, Sensational Vancouver, Thompson, West Vancouver Museum

Ned Pratt’s West Coast Modern House

by Eve Lazarus on October 6, 2013

Peter Pratt renovated and restored the house his father designed in 1953

I spent the afternoon with architect Peter Pratt at his home in the British Properties yesterday. Peter’s father Ned Pratt designed the house in the early 1950s and lived there for most of his life. You’ve likely never heard of Ned Pratt, I hadn’t until recently, and I find that really interesting because he may just be the most important architect to come out of Vancouver. Pratt was a principal at Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and he hired and mentored some of the most influential architects of the time. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Paul Merrick, Barry Downs, Fred Hollingsworth, and artist BC Binning, all worked there at one point.

It was Pratt who designed the BC Electric building (BC Hydro) on Burrard Street and the Dal Grauer Substation next door, both game changers in architectural design in those early ‘50s. Binning did the murals for the building and Pratt helped Binning build his West Vancouver home—the house credited for kick starting the West Coast modern movement in BC.

“Pratt convinced BC Electric that a local firm with no experience in skyscraper design could handle the monumental task,” wrote architectural critic Robin Ward, in Pratt’s 1996 obituary. The drawings alone, if spread out would have covered five city blocks, noted Ward.

Mural designed by Ned Pratt and Ron Thom

When Peter took over the one-acre property and his childhood home, the house had started to leak and rot. “I don’t know how many times I heard ‘it’s a tear down Pratt, you can’t save it,” he said. “This is our home, it’s not so much an asset, it’s our home. It has a sense of place.”

Against all advice he decided to save what he could and restore it, keeping features such as a mural that Pratt and Ron Thom made from fiberglass and paper. Peter has moved walls around, taken out rooms, added skylights and put cork on the floors. He added bench seats out of reclaimed wood from the Pantages Theatre to go with a table his dad built.

Then Peter built his own post and beam home right next door. One side of the newer house is sheer glass and opens up onto the garden and a large water feature filled with fish. A courtyard connects the two houses and there are angles everywhere you look that give hints of what’s to come, what Peter calls “a process of discovery” that’s characteristic of these West Coast modern homes.

Ned’s house is 1,200 sq.ft. Peter’s is only slightly larger. Both are a nod to simplicity and scale and the importance of landscape. Proof that we don’t have to rip down these beautiful houses because they don’t fill out the lot.

View from Ned Pratt's living room — View from Ned Pratt’s living room

Tags Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Binning, Fred Hollingsworth, Ned Pratt, Paul Merrick, Peter Pratt, Ron Thom, Thompson Berwick Pratt

Boyd House

by Eve Lazarus on July 19, 2012

The story of Ron Thom and Boyd house appears in Sensational Vancouver

Kerry McPhedran is selling the house she bought in 1972. It’s not because she wants to—as a freelance writer, it’s her retirement plan, and because of its tony West Vancouver address, it comes with a hefty $1.9 million price tag—too steep for most of us.

And, that’s a problem for Kerry, because she won’t sell her home to anybody. The house nurtured her when she needed it, she values the part it played in the West Coast architectural movement through its architect Ron Thom, and she loves the aesthetic—one that works with the landscape, rather than imposing itself upon it.

“I want someone who really loves this house and who will be thrilled to be in it,” she says. “If you have lived in one you do feel your life is better having lived in that space.”

I parked on Duchess and climbed the stone stairs to the house, past massive cedars, dogwoods, sword ferns, salal and Oregon grape. You can just see the house from the street—the floor to ceiling glass walls and low roof meld with the surroundings.

Ron Thom

(Photo by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward)

The house was designed by Ron Thom in 1954, and named for its first owners—Joan and Bruce Boyd, artists who studied with Thom at the Vancouver School of Art, along with B.C. Binning, Jack Shadbolt and Gordon Smith.

It was a heady time for art and architecture and the West Coast’s challenging terrain and tight budgets were also the inspiration and career starters for Thom, Fred Hollingsworth and Arthur Erickson.

Because long before he designed the BC Electric Building, Massey College, the Shaw Festival Theatre, and the Toronto Zoo, Thom designed more than 60 houses, mostly on the North Shore. Many of these were bulldozed, including the Lynn Valley house Thom built for himself in 1948.

The houses were dubbed “midnight specials” because Thom and Hollingsworth designed them for $100 each, late at night while moonlighting from their day jobs.

When Kerry interviewed Hollingsworth for a Western Living article in 1990, four years after Thom’s death, he told her that it was an “exciting time.”

“We were doing little wee houses, mostly for people with no money—usually neighbours and art school graduates and staff,” he said.

Kerry is the third owner. Her office is in the same room where the Boyd’s once painted, and where the second owner, a voice coach, kept her piano.

Designed by Ron Thom in 1954 — Kerry McPhedran at Boyd House, 2012. Eve Lazarus photo

The house is small by today’s standards. But the open plan design, tongue-and-groove cedar, massive cinder-block fireplace, and what’s left of the original ox-blood coloured concrete floor, give it a snug, cozy feel.

Kerry has put her own stamp on the house. In 1977 John Keith-King designed a new kitchen and dining room and enlarged the master bedroom. Russell Hollingsworth, Fred’s son, punched in the skylights.

Kerry wants a new owner, not just a buyer who will tear it down, but she’s also realistic. She’s working to have the house included on the Community Heritage Register. And, just to be clear—because this seems to instill fear in buyer’s hearts—being on the Register does not mean designation, it means that a new owner will be eligible for a bunch of incentives, including the potential to build a second house at the bottom of the large lot.

The carpet’s a little tired, the bathroom needs a reno, and the skylights could be updated, but it’s time for someone else to put their stamp on the house and love it as much as Kerry. Maybe even become the house’s custodian for the next 40 years.

Tags 985 Duchess Avenue, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, B.C. Binning, BC Electric Building, Community Heritage Register, Fred Hollingsworth, Gordon Smith, Jack Shadbolt, Joan and Bruce Boyd, John Keith-King, Kerry McPhedran, Lynn Valley, Ron Thom, Russell Hollingsworth, West Vancouver

The 1981 PNE Prize Home

West Coast Modern:

Financial Problems:

Related:

BC Binning’s Missing Murals

Artist and teacher:

Murals:

West Coast Modern Architecture

West Coast Modern on Display

The incredible photography of Selwyn Pullan

West Coast Modern and Architect Barry Downs

Rapidly disappearing:

Focus on the landscape:

Related:

Ned Pratt’s West Coast Modern House

Boyd House

Ron Thom

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West Coast Modern:

Financial Problems:

Related:

Artist and teacher:

Murals:

Rapidly disappearing:

Focus on the landscape:

Related:

Ron Thom

Support

Click to read posts about:

Subscribe to Our Newsletter