Eve Lazarus
The Standard Life Insurance building has been at the corner of Howe and Dunsmuir in Vancouver since 1975. It was the third building on the site. In 1889, it was occupied by a hotel.
For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
As 14-storey office blocks go, there’s really nothing wrong with the Standard Life Insurance building at the southwest corner of Howe and Dunsmuir Streets.
Most people are surprised to learn that from 1907 to 1939 there was a pier at English Bay, but it was only recently that I found out that English Bay actually had two piers. Local historian and collector Neil Whaley has kindly provided a guest blog about the second pier at English Bay, the one where all the music and dancing took place.
We’ve been taking advantage of the lack of traffic on the roads to take Pickles, our Chiweenie on some new trails. This week we ended up in North Burnaby, parked at the bottom of Boundary and walked along the Trans Canada Trail to Willingdon.
While I’m familiar with the squatters at Maplewood Flats and Cates Park on the North Van side of Burrard Inlet, I’d never heard of Crabtown, a collection of squatters’ homes built on raised pilings between the railway tracks and the water.
Aaron Chapman’s latest book Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife is a delightful romp through the ghosts of nightclubs past. Aaron’s behind-the-scenes stories are told in such a way, it’s like sitting down and having a beer with him. There are too many clubs to list here—everything from Chinatown’s Marco Polo to Oil Can Harry’s, The Smilin’ Buddha, to the Cave.
Selwyn Pullan shot these photos of the Ritz Hotel in 1956, shortly after it had been renovated into this awesome mid-century modern look.
But while it had a fancy name, the Ritz Hotel at 1040 West Georgia was originally designed as a YMCA in 1912 by Henry Sandham Griffith.
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.
Occasionally, when I’m searching for photos using the baffling search engine at Vancouver Archives, I stumble across an interesting building or streetscape that I’ve never seen before. Often the information with the photos is quite detailed, but in the above photo all I had was a photo of the Royal Crown Soap Company building and the date ca.1905.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Last week, Michael Kluckner and I were over at Tom Carter’s studio looking out his seventh storey window onto the EasyPark—a cavernous concrete lot that fronts West Pender and takes up the entire city block from Cambie to Beatty Streets.
