From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
It turns out that standing in line to buy real estate isn`t some recent Vancouver phenomena—we`ve always done it. Philip T. Timms took this picture in 1909 as hundreds of Vancouver`s wealthiest citizens lined up to buy lots in Shaughnessy Heights from the CPR offices all the way down at the foot of Granville Street.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
Every year Ross Dyck, general manager of the Sylvia Hotel opens about 600 handwritten letters from fans of Mister Got to Go, mostly kids in Grades one and two. And every year he personally answers every one of them.
Dyck has worked in the hotel industry for the past 25 years, before that he taught drama and stage craft to high school kids.
*See update Hobbit House sold
I toured the Hobbit House this week. The South Cambie house is one of two story book cottages in Vancouver—a third is in West Van. The house has had a ton of media attention since it went up for sale, mostly speculation about its imminent demise.
There are some beautiful homes on the Vancouver Heritage House Tour this year—a couple of old Shaughnessy manors, a quirky turreted terra cotta and stone house in Mount Pleasant, and a colorful Edwardian on Kitchener Street, but the one I am most interested in is a tenement building in the DTES.
Heritage Vancouver released its annual top 10 endangered site list today and it spells more bad news for the last of the West End mansions.
The heritage conservation organization has flagged three properties: the Legg Residence at 1245 Harwood Street, Gabriola Mansion at 1531 Davie Street, and three houses that sit side by side at 1301, 1309 and 1315 Davie Street.
Spite Houses:
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Spite Houses and ran a picture of a lime green house painted with large purple dots. The back story was the owner had run afoul of the local heritage commission, was denied a building permit for a porch, and chose his colour scheme out of spite.
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
On Sunday February 1, 1981 shortly before 9:00 a.m., George Wright, a 70-something caretaker was working at the Englesea Lodge when he spotted fire coming from the building’s basement storage area.
“There was a big boom and the fire rushed out at me.
For the first half of last century, houses lined the water side of Beach Avenue, from the Burrard Street Bridge to Stanley Park
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
When I first started researching Alvo von Alvensleben some years ago I made several road trips to see how many of the buildings associated with him had withstood the bulldozer.