Eve Lazarus
For Part Six in my sad, but ongoing series of our missing buildings, I’ve selected a former city hall, a railway station and a court house and then taken a look at what we’ve done with their old sites.
Even if you don’t love the architecture—and I do happen to be a fan of anything that’s gothic and grim and wears a turret—you’ve got to admit that they’re interesting buildings, and would have made amazing additions to our current landscape.
Every now and then I run a story under a series I call “Our Missing Heritage – What were we thinking?” It came out of my frustration from researching my books on home histories. Often I’d hear or read about a great story that happened in a house, or see a picture of an amazing building only to find out that it had turned into a parking lot, a boxy condo tower or a monster house.
It’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago the Hastings Street area had a thriving theatre district, filled with opulent buildings, cafes and people, and known as the “Hastings Great White Way.”
In past blogs I’ve written about the Strand, the Pantages and the Empress–all theatres that once existed in downtown Vancouver, but have long since been turned into parking lots or cheaper, uninteresting buildings.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
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 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 in Sensational 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.
Mayor Gerry McGeer lived at 4812 Belmont Avenue in Point Grey between 1927 and his death there in 1947. At around 10:00 pm on June 17, 2022 the house burned to the ground. It was unoccupied and apparently under renovation after not getting a demolition permit.
Sixth most expensive listing:
As of August 2014, the property at 4812 Belmont is apparently the 6th most expensive listing in Vancouver.
In 1913 Vancouver had a thriving theatre district that included eight movie theatres as well as stock theatres like the Pantages and the Empress——both completed in 1908.
Over the years we’ve managed to pretty well destroy all evidence of these theatres—the Capital, the Strand, two Orpheum theatres, and of course, most recently the Pantages Theatre at Main and Hastings that as Heritage Vancouver so succinctly put was “demolition by neglect.”
Theatre companies put on lavish productions at the Empress that called for sheep and horses on stage, as well as cars.
2895 Newmarket Drive, North Vancouver:
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