Heritage Buildings

Update: In February 2022 it was announced that the Wing Sang Building at 51 East Pender Street and reportedly the oldest in Chinatown, is going to be the new home of the Chinese Canadian Museum. Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History  In 2006, I wrote a story for Marketing Magazine featuring… Continue reading Wing Sang Building

Boot Hill, BC Penitentiary’s cemetery in New Westminster, holds dozens of unnamed graves of burials between 1913 and 1968. In last week’s blog, I wrote about my visit to New Westminster to see the buildings that once formed part of BC Penitentiary, a federal prison that operated from 1878 to 1980. The most interesting part… Continue reading Boot Hill: New Westminster’s Strangest Cemetery

Jail for Sale: In a real estate crazed city like Vancouver where a heritage house can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars over its list price, turns out it’s just not that easy to sell an old jail. Realtor Leonardo di Francesco has had parts of the former BC Penitentiary on the market since… Continue reading Jail for Sale

The Imperial Bank of Canada opened its new building on April 21, 1958 at Granville and Dunsmuir Streets. It featured this stunning mural by BC Binning. The building is now occupied by a Shoppers Drug Mart, but the mural is still there. From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History The Mural: Next time… Continue reading BC Binning’s Secret Mural

The Devonshire Hotel on West Georgia was demolished July 5, 1981 to make way for the head office tower of the Bank of BC. Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History Devonshire Apartment Hotel: The Devonshire originally opened as an apartment building, but within a few years was operating as the Devonshire… Continue reading The Devonshire (1924-1981)

When the Pacific Centre took over Granville and Georgia Streets, it knocked out blocks of heritage buildings. Story and photos from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History The Great White Urinal: When I moved to Vancouver from Australia in the mid-1980s, locals had already had a dozen years to get used to Pacific… Continue reading Pacific Centre

I was driving along Lynn Valley Road for probably the hundredth time this year, stopped at the traffic lights at Fromme. The Lynn Valley Care Centre is on the corner there, sitting behind a stone fence and a very big monkey tree. For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the… Continue reading Behind the Stone Wall on Lynn Valley Road

You wouldn’t buy a house without having a building inspector check the foundation, so why wouldn’t you research your potential home’s history? A heritage house at Fraser and East 10th went up for sale last week for $1.4 million. It wasn’t the price-tag though (low by Vancouver standards) that captured people’s attention, it was the… Continue reading Would you buy a murder house?

The 2400 Motel on Kingsway opened in 1946. It still has an old fashioned, retro feel and its huge red and blue neon sign.  I fell in love with the 2400 Motel on Kingsway 20 years ago when I was writing  Frommer’s With Kids Vancouver. Loved the old fashioned, retro feel of the place and… Continue reading A short history of the 2400 Motel

The Orillia on Robson: The Orillia on Robson and Seymour Streets, was just a memory by the time I moved to Vancouver in the mid-1980s, but from time to time I see a mention or a photo of this early mixed-use structure at Robson and Seymour. One particularly poignant photo was taken before its destruction… Continue reading The Orillia (1903-1985)

Before the Vancouver Art Gallery moved into the old courthouse on West Georgia, its home was a gorgeous art deco building a few blocks away.  If you live in Vancouver, you know that the Vancouver Art Gallery is housed in the old law courts, an imposing neo-classical building designed by celebrity architect Francis Rattenbury in… Continue reading The First Vancouver Art Gallery

Michael Kluckner’s latest BC bestseller Here & Gone: Artwork of Vancouver & Beyond is gorgeous. One half is filled with his paintings of disappearing Vancouver (Here) and the other of his travels in countries such as Australia, Cuba, Mexico and Japan (Gone). Missing Heritage: In the introduction to Here, he writes: “I see myself as… Continue reading Here & Gone: Vancouver’s Corner Stores

The Canada Post tunnel opened in March 1959 and carried mail from the West Georgia Street building to Waterfront Station. By the mid-1960s it was obsolete. By 2013 it was gone. When the main Post Office was built on West Georgia Street in the 1950s, it was the largest welded steel structure in the world.… Continue reading The Canada Post Tunnel

An Interview with Jazmin Welch, book designer about working on Vancouver Exposed I’m excited to tell you that Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History is now in bookstores. And, while the saying goes “don’t judge a book by its cover,” I have to disagree. A great cover not only helps to sell the… Continue reading An Interview with Vancouver Exposed Book Designer Jazmin Welch

Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Wakeland novels, a detective series set in Vancouver that includes Invisible Dead and Hell and Gone. “When poet-turned-screenwriter Paul Ling goes missing, his teenage daughter hires Vancouver P.I. Dave Wakeland to track him down. To the shock of his family and colleagues, Ling’s body is found within days… Continue reading When Fact Meets Fiction: Sam Wiebe’s Vancouver

Frank Gowen was born in England in 1877. He moved to Vancouver in 1913 and worked as a photographer until his death in 1946. Chris Stiles kindly sent me this fabulous panoramic photo that she and husband Alan found when they were going through some personal effects of Alan’s father recently. “My husband’s dad, Roy… Continue reading Frank Gowen’s Vancouver

Margaret Cadwaladr has written a memoir Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, a nostalgic walk through the area, filled with black and white and colour photos. When I first came to Canada in the mid-1980s the Woodward’s Food Floor saved my life. It was literally the only place in Vancouver that sold jars of vegemite. And… Continue reading Woodward’s: Store #1

Donna recently sent me this photo of a house on Harwood Street in the West End. She said: “I came across this picture in some old family photos. I live in Calgary and as far as I know, there is no family connection to the building. There is no date on my photo, and I… Continue reading The Harwood Street House

Hastings Sunrise: At just shy of three acres, Burrard View is not a big park. It runs between North Slocan, North Penticton, Yale and Wall Street. The park slopes down to the water and is shaped like half a house. The building on the west side of the park has been the Cottage Hospice since… Continue reading Burrard View Park

For the last year or so I’ve been receiving emails from a realtor named Trent Rodney at West Coast Modern. They come with an invitation to drop by one of the dwindling stock of West Coast Modern houses on the North Shore, sip a cocktail, eat catered food and listen to jazz. The houses are… Continue reading West Coast Modern: Selling Architecture as Art