Eve Lazarus
This is part four in an occasional series that asks people who work in and around heritage to tell us their favourite buildings and the one that we should never have destroyed.
Anne Banner is the proprietress of Salmagundi, an antiques, oddities and novelties shop located in the J.W.Horne Block.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
If you read my blog regularly, you know that I’m a huge fan of West Coast Modern, and especially of Fred Hollingsworth, an amazing North Vancouver architect who died this year at age 98 after changing the face of architecture.
Continuing on with a series I started earlier this year, I’ve asked a few friends to tell me their favourite Vancouver building and the one they miss the most.
Michael is the author of a dozen books. His most recent is Toshiko, a graphic novel set in BC in 1944.
Wandering down Haro Street in Vancouver’s West End, it’s a welcome surprise to come across the West End Guest House, a gorgeous Edwardian nestled in a sea of ugly, non-descript apartment buildings.
It’s one of the few houses that managed to survive the apartment blitz of the 1950s when the City of Vancouver removed the six-storey height limit, and instead of repairing and repurposing these character houses, the West End lost dozens of sturdy old places, built from first growth timber and stone and crafted by stonemasons.
Occasionally it’s nice to celebrate heritage buildings that have survived the bulldozers and are being used in interesting ways. One of my favourites is the eccentric Accommodations by Pillow Suites.
Accommodations by Pillow Suites, Mount Pleasant
This eccentric former corner grocery store was built in 1910 near Vancouver City Hall and is a short-term rental suite.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
I’m not a huge fan of facadism—the practice of keeping the front of the building and tearing everything else down behind it—but in the case of Skwachays Lodge, it made sense.
In 1913, W.T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower, created a three-storey brick residential building at 31 West Pender Street that was known as the Palmer Rooms.
It’s hard to imagine today, but from the 1930s until the mid 1950s there were three daily newspapers—the Vancouver Sun, the Province and the Vancouver News-Herald operating in Vancouver—all independents fighting for market share in a population of less than 350,000.
The Vancouver News-Herald called itself “Western Canada’s Largest Morning Herald.” When it was founded in 1933 the Herald had a circulation of 10,000.
Green Island is one of 21 lighthouses in B.C. recently granted heritage status. This story is from a chapter on lighthouses that never made it way into Sensational Victoria.
“The winter wind whistles down the Portland Canal from Alaska and seas lash away at the tower and the dwellings, shellacking them with ice so thick that the whole station resembles ice sculptures at a bizarre winter carnival, and the keepers need a hammer to open a door.
