Heritage Buildings

The Vancouver Heritage House tour is coming up Sunday June 2, and I haven’t been this excited since Casa Mia was featured in 2014. Don’t get me wrong, the VHF works hard all year to curate a great mix of architectural styles, neighbourhoods and house sizes, but unless you work at, or have a daughter… Continue reading The Vancouver Heritage House Tour, Alvo von Alvensleben and the Old Residence

There’s been a lot about laneway houses in the media over the last couple of years. Loosely defined, it’s a legal way of plonking down a small house in your backyard, and depending on your point of view, either exploiting or helping to ease the current rental squeeze. Laneway houses have to be under 1,000… Continue reading The Kitsilano Laneway House

I have just acquired a piece of St. Andrews-Wesley Church. A rug that’s worn in all the places that you’d expect of something that has graced the entranceway of this downtown heritage building for eight decades and hosted thousands of multi-denominational feet. The renovations were made possible by the sale of church land and a… Continue reading St. Andrews-Wesley Church’s $30 Million Dollar Makeover

Last Sunday, when Fatidjah Nestman looked out of her high-rise on West 13th she noticed that an old painted ad for White’s Grocery had popped up when construction workers removed the cement siding from a building on Granville Street. Her neighbor, Karen Fiorini, took this picture of the ghost sign and kindly sent it to me.… Continue reading Ghost Signs: White’s Grocery of South Granville

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History In 2016, the Vancouver Historical Society, of which I was a board member, was contacted by the Port of Vancouver and asked what we’d like to do with a three metre-high sculpture made from BC granite that had been sitting on their land at the foot… Continue reading Art, History and a Mission

Long before Jimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum on September 7, 1968, he had a Vancouver connection. Jimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum on September 7, 1968. Four years after the Beatles and 11 years after Elvis Presley played Empire Stadium and changed music forever. The difference was that Jimi had a Vancouver connection—his grandmother… Continue reading Jimi Hendrix Plays the Pacific Coliseum—September 7, 1968

Lynn Headwaters: The BC Mills House Museum at Lynn Headwaters plays a cameo role in Rachel Greenaway’s brilliant new mystery Creep where the action all takes place in upper Lynn Valley. While the little house has sat at the entrance to the park for a couple of decades now, I only recently discovered its back story.… Continue reading The BC Mills House Museum, a Mystery, a Captain and a Troll

Frits Jacobsen arrived in Vancouver in 1968 and drew many of Vancouver’s long since demolished heritage houses. By Jason Vanderhill I first heard about Frits Jacobsen, and saw his beautiful drawings in a post by Jason Vanderhill on his Illustrated Vancouver blog. Jason kindly allowed me to repost it here. 522 Shanghai Alley: Frits Jacobsen… Continue reading The Art of Frits Jacobsen

A little while ago I was having lunch with Tom Carter and Maurice Guibord at the newly renovated Railway Club. Afterwards, we were walking along Richards Street and Tom gave us a tour of the St. Clair Hotel-Hostel. The Blushing Boutique is on the ground floor and a set of very steep stairs takes you… Continue reading Captain Pybus and Vancouver’s St. Clair Hotel

The Traveller’s Hotel opened in Ladysmith in 1913. The swastikas on the facade meant good luck in Sanskrit I was over on Vancouver Island this week doing some biking and stopped in at Ladysmith. It’s the first time I’ve been there and it was great to walk down a main drag that still has many… Continue reading Swastikas and the Traveller’s Hotel

Did you see the article in the Georgia Straight last week headlined “Modest Vancouver heritage home proposed to be reborn as boutique restaurant”? The accompanying picture showed a funky purple Victorian house with pink trim and the kind of cool architectural doodads, that we don’t see anymore. Sweet, I thought. Instead of pulling down another… Continue reading Mount Pleasant’s Coulter House

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History I was driving along Hastings the other day when I saw a huge statue in the yard of Ital Decor in Burnaby. It looked suspiciously like one of the WW1 nurses that guarded the 10th floor of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building before it was imploded in… Continue reading Finding the Rhea Sisters  

Last month, Michael Kluckner wrote a guest blog about the buried houses of Vancouver. It was hugely popular and readers wrote in to let me know about more of these houses. Today’s blog is a compilation of those comments, photos and emails. Now a story in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History. Homeowners… Continue reading More of Vancouver’s Buried Houses

The original Buntzen powerhouse came into service in 1904, and was replaced in 1951. A second gothic looking powerhouse was completed in 1914. #2 has been the host to a number of creepy films, including Stephen King’s It, Placid, Freddy Vs. Jason and Roxanne. Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History Indian… Continue reading The Buntzen Power Stations on Indian Arm

If you live in North Vancouver you may have noticed the old Tudor-style house at Chesterfield and Osborne in the upper Lonsdale Area. It’s hard to see these days, because several years ago we allowed developers to build two large “carriage” houses, in what was once a magnificent garden filled with hollies, laburnums, cedars, black… Continue reading Chesterfield House

It’s hard to imagine today, but when the Marine Building opened in 1930 it was the tallest building in Vancouver and stayed that way for more than a decade. If you look at the photo (below), you can see that when architects McCarter and Nairne, designed it, four of the 22 floors were built into… Continue reading The Marine Building and the Little House Next Door

This is an occasional series that asks people who love history and heritage to tell us their favourite existing building and the one that never should have been torn down. Patrick A. Dunae is a Victoria-born historian. A past member of the City of Victoria Heritage Advisory Panel, he is currently president of the Friends of the… Continue reading Heritage Streeters from Victoria (with Patrick Dunae, Tom Hawthorn and Eve Lazarus)

I finally got to motor up Indian Arm and see the Wigwam Inn–well from the outside. You can’t get inside unless you’re a member of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History It seems crazy to me that it’s still fairly inaccessible (unless you own a boat), yet… Continue reading The Wigwam Inn at Indian Arm

Fans of Michael Kluckner’s history books—Vanishing Vancouver, Vancouver the Way it Was, and several others of his beautifully illustrated history books, might find his latest release a big departure. 2050, A Post-apocalyptic Murder Mystery is a graphic novel, a fictional account of a Vancouver that has been ravished by disease, climate change and a benevolent dictator who keeps the population poor to reduce their carbon footprint and ultimately save the planet. You’ll recognize Orwell, Huxley, and a nod to Mayor Robertson, with “Pleasant Planet”—a drink that keeps the populace both happy and sterile.

This is an ongoing series that asks people who love history and heritage to tell us their favourite existing building and the one that never should have been torn down. Bill Allman is a “recovering lawyer” and instructor of Entertainment Law at UBC. Bill has been a theatre manager (the Vogue), president of Theatre Under the… Continue reading Heritage Streeters with Bill Allman, Kristin Hardie and Pamela Post