Jail for Sale:
In a real estate crazed city like Vancouver where a heritage house can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars over its list price, turns out it’s just not that easy to sell an old jail.
Realtor Leonardo di Francesco has had parts of the former BC Penitentiary on the market since last December, so this week I drove out to New Westminster to check out the buildings and former prison grounds.
BC Pen was a maximum-security federal jail that opened in 1878 and closed in 1980. Most of the buildings were demolished and the grounds turned into townhouses in an area that’s been remarketed from Jailhouse Blues to Fraser Lands. The two heritage-designated buildings that survived though are quite impressive.
Gate House:
The one-time jail gatehouse is exactly 60 steps up from Columbia Street. It looks like a giant castle, and was a daycare, offices for a technology company, and most recently a pub/restaurant. Built in 1931, it’s currently empty and assessed at $3.4 million.
The second building is the three-storey prison and hospital completed in 1878. Current tenants include a sports medicine clinic and an orthopedic surgery. It was constructed out of heavy stone which di Francesco tells me was brought over from England because the weight of the stone was useful in balancing the ship’s cargo. It’s currently assessed at $4.5 million.
The third building for sale, currently a church and daycare, was built in 1989—nine years after BC Pen was decommissioned. While it’s not a heritage building, it does have a beautiful garden and the prison’s brass bell that was cast in 1895. According to the plaque the bell “was used to call in the inmates from the fields, toll the meal hours and signal that the inmate count was correct.” It also rang when prisoners escaped or held a riot. That property (which includes the bell) is currently assessed at $1.7 million.
© Eve Lazarus, 2022
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26 comments on “Jail for Sale”
I visited the sports medicine facility in the 90s . The Dr. besides giving me a cortisone shot in my shoulder looked after many of soon to be defunct BC Lions. Intersting buildings, historic location, I hope that someone with a vision buys them
I didn’t get to see inside the buildings unfortunately. But agree, hope somebody with vision buys and repurposes them.
I wonder why these buildings are still for sale. Maybe too costly to remove the old buildings and build a new one. I worked security in a hospital that was closed and going to be demolished soon. Walking through maybe 100 years of history made me feel like ghosts of the past still exist. This history is interesting much like old hospitals in Vancouver that have been demolished over the years.
Probably has something to do with them being almost double their assessed value! They’re also heritage-designated so a developer can’t tear them down, and I believe they are not zoned for condos.
Thanks Eve. Perhaps the provincial government should allow a change to the heritage designation. That would be a good start. I wouldnt want an old building, too much work after paying too much in the first place.
Not sure I would want the government to be allowed to overturn a heritage designation.
Noooooooooooo! It’s so difficult to get a building designated and there are so few heritage designed buildings in BC I would hate to see a change in any one of them.
They should save the old buildings they are to quick to tear them down all in the name of progress.
So happy to hear that! I was too young in 1980 to see the way the was inside looked before they demolished it. I did see the inside for a Hallowe’en event in 2019 and then a private an event last Halowe’en.
Housing away from the inner core & drugs ?
Usual problem , MONEY!
In a hot real estate market, any property that doesn’t sell within 30 days is over priced. That’s one strike for these properties. Second strike is their very large size and limited uses.
I toured the B.C. Penitentiary before it closed – they had an open house for a week. Once inside the walls you could explore as long as you wished. Access was available to riot damaged cells, displays of early punishment and prisoners’ handicrafts. I followed a man and woman with children as they were shown the cell he served time in. After 90 minutes I had seen enough, and the twenty foot high walls started to feel claustrophobic. It felt great to be “outside” again.
Thanks so much Angus for sending these amazing photos! Have added several to the post
As an avid lover of all things BC History as well as an artist, I’d love to see the spaces used as a combination arts/museum space. I understand 65 Richmond street has some long term leases, so it may not be possible for a new owner to do anything different with that space for a while. Beautiful buildings.
Hi Eve. I love your writings, have read most I think… but here’s my story of the BC Pen. When I was about 4 or 5 (1950/1951) I, along with my sister, took tap at the Evelyne Ward Dance Academy from about age 3 – 4 for several years, having preformed in hospitals, train stations, even Air Ports, theatres like the International Cinema when 5!! Anyway, the reason I’m commenting is because I’ve told my kids that “your mom has been in some of the finest prisons in the city”. And until recently they always thought it a joke, but it was no joke!
Twice that I remember clearly, we did a show there for the prisoners. Easter and Christmas, or maybe it was 2 Christmas’s but those are the ones I remember so well. The prisoners’ made little gifts for all us kids. One year i received a little silver heart shaped locket, hand made; and on another recital I was given a bunch of miniature bananas! little tiny things the size of my (now) finger! I was so fascinated by these and vowed to ‘keep’ them ‘alive’ forever! I put them in a shoe box when we got home, and tucked them underneath our radiator in our kitchen. They didn’t seem to do so well there so I put them in our old fridge. Well, suffice to say that those little bananas like that even less! I had these little black things, clearly not to be eaten! The one that I did manage to taste was so good, and sweet! I’ve never tasted a banana like that since! Anyway, I thought I would pass this along to you. As sad as some of the stories and history is at BC Pen, my memory takes to a time and place that was always happy and joyful.
Thank you for all your blogs and stories. Especially Death by Milkshake. (I well remember some of the parties involved…but then that’s another story…
Sincerely,
Georgie Brown UE
zzbrown@shaw.ca
This is such a great story! Thanks so much for taking the time to write and for your very kind words!
I don’t recall the dates, maybe late 70’s. I had a crew working inside on the boiler plant. There was an “incident” and a lock down. So my crew were overnight guests. They had some stories. Another time we were in the guard house when a prisoner was being transferred in. He was apparently a real bad dude as they could open one only gate at a time so we expected to see some monster. They unloaded him, he was all shackled hand and foot, and stood all of 4 foot 10. What a surprise.
Yikes!
A sad story out of that prison was when neighbor of ours Frank Newton who was a guard at the prison was mailed a parcel in which when opened turned out to be a bomb sent by a prisoner. It was in December 23, 1966 it blew off his hands and his 11 year old son Norman Newton lost the sight in one of his eyes. I still remember the sound of the explosion , I was 6 years old at the time. The Anthony Martin BC Penitentiary Collection is an interesting read also.
There is a good article from Monte Cristo talking about some of the history. https://montecristomagazine.com/highlights/bc-penitentiary
There is a treasure trove of history here and it sounds like some of it has been lost.
I worked for the tech company that was in the main gatehouse building for over a decade. Such an amazing building and experience to work there! We were on the top floor, and our storage was in the basement, affectionately known as “The Dungeon”. No one ever went down there alone to get supplies. We were sure the spirits of dead prisoners roamed around down there. Silly we knew, and yet no one went down there alone.
We occupied one of the spaces in the gatehouse for many years, until the current owner purchased the building. Absolutely beautiful building, however it was on the market by the previous owner for many years and his difficulty in selling was largely due to its heritage designation, and the restrictions it imposes with respect to maintenance and repurposing. The interior had some features that you just don’t see anymore like 12 ft ceilings and beautiful mouldings.
If there was a way to configure the building for residential use then it might see some play however with the state of commercial real estate at the moment combined with the economy, it will be difficult to move the property unless the price drops significantly. While it’s great that there’s the heritage designation, I suspect it greatly limits what you can do with the building and needs the “right” buyer.
I’ve spoken with people who were at Woodlands in the 1960s-1980s, just across Glenbrook Ravine. Many recalled being afraid to go out onto the grounds at night when there were riots at “The Pen.”
Me and a few friends snuck into the pen just before they tore it down got some real cool pictures from inside. We walked along the south wall and went through west guard tower and then walked along the west wall towards the southwest guard tower then went through the southwest Guard tower down to the ground and took a tour.
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