The name of the 11-acre green space at the entrance to Stanley Park known as Devonian Harbour Park has nothing to do with its indigenous history, the land’s connection to the Kanakas, the buildings that once dotted its landscape or Vancouver. The park was named after the Calgary-based Devonian Group of Charitable Foundations which forked over $600,000 to develop the site to its present look in 1983.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
The Stuart Building was a landmark that sat at the southeast corner of Georgia and Chilco Streets, marking the border between the city and Stanley Park from 1909 until its demise in 1982.
Painted Sky Blue:
It didn’t have the elegance of the Birks Building, the grandeur of the second Hotel Vancouver or the presence of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building.
The first CPR station sat at the foot of Howe Street and operated between 1887 and 1914.
The First Transcontinental Train:
The first transcontinental train arrived in Vancouver on May 23, 1887. Businesses closed for the afternoon, city council adjourned, the city band and fire brigade led a parade of hundreds to the station.
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 Hotel.
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 Centre and the “Great White Urinal”—the name they’d not so affectionately dubbed the Eaton’s department store building.
The Imperial Roller Skating Rink opened in 1907 at English Bay and boasted the largest skating floor in North America.
Morton Park:
In 1907, more than 100 years before the famous laughing statues appeared at English Bay, the Imperial Roller Skating Rink opened in Morton Park at Denman and Davie Streets.
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 in the 1980s and shows the Orillia boarded up, covered in music handbills, smeared with graffiti, and the words “Save Me!” scrawled across one of the plywood boardings.
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 1906.