The Marine Building is one of Vancouver’s most treasured buildings, a gorgeous example of Art Deco. So why did we destroy our other one?
From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
The Devonshire Apartments, the Georgia Medical-Dental Building and the Marine Building were all designed by McCarter & Nairne architects.* The Devonshire was first, designed as an apartment building in 1923. Next came the 15-storey Art Deco medical building—and the only one left standing—the Marine Building completed in 1930.
As this more recent photo shows, the HSBC Building now sits where the elegant Devonshire Hotel used to be, and the medical building was blown up or perhaps blown down is more accurate—to make way for the 23-storey Cathedral Place.
I quite like Cathedral Place. It’s nicely tiered, the roof fits in with the Hotel Vancouver across the street, and it even has a few nurses, gargoyles and lions pasted about as a reminder of the former building. Everyone over 35 likely remembers the three nurses in their starchy World War 1 uniforms looking down from their 11th storey parapets. The Rhea Sisters, as they were known, were made from terra-cotta and weighed several tonnes each. The nurses were restored and are now part of the Technology Enterprise Facility building at UBC.
But here’s a thought. Instead of honouring a heritage building by sticking fibreglass casts on a new building, why not just keep the original one!
Paul Merrick, the architect who designed Cathedral Place, and who did such a nice job renovating the Marine Building, converting the old BC Hydro Building to the Electra, and fixing up the Pennsylvania Hotel on Hastings, could have easily designed Cathedral Place someplace else. The Georgia Medical-Dental Building was only 60 after all—hardly old enough for its unseemly demise, but old enough to represent a significant part of our history.
I never saw the Devonshire, it came down in 1981, but I love one of its story. According to newspaper reports after being kicked out of the snotty Hotel Vancouver in 1951, Louis Armstrong and his All Stars walked across the street and were immediately given rooms in the Devonshire. Walter Fred Evans, a one-time member of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra built the Devonshire, and supposedly Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and the Mills Brothers wouldn’t stay anywhere else.
* McCarter & Nairne also designed the Patricia Hotel, 403 East Hastings; Spencer’s Department Store (now SFU at Harbour Centre); the Livestock Building at the PNE, and the General Post Office on West Georgia.
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.
Our Missing Heritage is an ongoing series. Please also see:
Our Missing Heritage (part two) Mid Century Modern North Vancouver
Our Missing Heritage (part three) The Empress Theatre
Our Missing Heritage (part four) The Strand Theatre, Birks Building and the second Hotel Vancouver
Our Missing Heritage (part five) The Hastings Street Theatre District
13 comments on “Our Missing Heritage — What were we thinking? (Part 1)”
I remember it quite well. The common belief (and I share this still) was that the gargoyles on the Hotel Vancouver opposite were aligned in such a way that they appeared to be leering at the nurses. It was one of those cases where one building was effectively talking to another. Now the new nurses are out of alignment and the gargoyles are leering into the middle-distance, poor sods.
I seem to remember those sisters ending up at a new building at UBC
An article I read at the time said the stone was too fractured to put them back on the building. Perhaps they repaired them later? Like to think they did and are back in the company of leering gargoyles….
That’s the very question I was asking, when I cruised the streets of Vancouver with my cameras, in the 1980’s, as the wrecking balls and bulldozers were unleashed and unrestricted.
My “Eighties Vancouver” archive (linked above), thirty years later, looks positively vintage (as I do). For me the images stand as a record of the Vancouver I loved ― a little rough around the edges, but full of character and community. I fled the scene of destruction in the early nineties.
Hi Raymond: your photos are fabulous and it doesn’t look like your link came through. Se here it is again http://raymondparkerphoto.com/eighties-vancouver/
Thanks Eve. I’ve spent the last year scanning those (medium format) negs, restoring where necessary, and now printing them with an updated “digital darkroom.” In most cases, I’m able to make more visually striking prints than I achieved with traditional silver gelatin materials.
I’ll soon have a shop on the site for those inclined to acquire prints.
Incidentally, Google Streetview and Earth has been a great help in identifying some of the locations where I hadn’t taken notes, though some proved very difficult as the whole area had been transformed.
I hate what the dirt pimps did to the old Medical Dental Building. It’s where my grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1949.
I remember the parkade beside the wonderful Medical/Dental Building as well, and the wild ride the lot valet/attendant gave us driving our Mini Minor to it’s allocated parking spot way back in the mid 60’s. Cathedral Place is OK I guess, but this opinion comes from someone who generally dislikes post-modern architecture intensely. I prefer the real classics; both older and modernist.
hey folks. I was in the Bill Reid Gallery last week (on the site of the former of the Devonshire, I believe), where there is a large clay/terracotta frieze in the main exhibition space. I have a suspicion (unconfirmed by the gallery staff) that it was taken from the Burrard Medical-Dental Building, but would appreciate information that any of you might have.
found it:
“Terra-cotta panels near the base depict the history of transportation and the discovery of the Pacific Coast, and a frieze with waves, sea horses and marine fauna appears above the ground floor around both fronts of the building.”
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-marine-building/
Asked and answered ! Thanks for the info. Eve
The Dev had the quietest, best beer parlour in its basement; if you wanted to be part of a scene, you would choose the Ritz or the Cecil or the Alcazar (to be arty), but if you had a hot date, ha ha, at 25 cents a glass, you would choose the Dev. There was more of a UBC crowd next door in the Georgia, in its George V pub, also in the basement.
Would have liked to have seen the Dev! Wonder where the young go now if they’re looking for a hot date in an old building….