Arthur Erickson

West Coast Modern on Display

by Eve Lazarus on June 28, 2015

There is a chapter on West Coast Modern Artists and Architects in Sensational Vancouver.

If you love West Coast modern like I do, check out the art and architecture exhibit at the West Vancouver Museum this summer.

Work from all the greats is there—Fred Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Gordon Smith, Len Norris, Jack Shadbolt, Bill Reid and Zoltan Kiss and documented by photographers Selwyn Pullan and John Fulker.

I had spent time in the houses of Barry Downs, Ned Pratt and Selwyn Pullan while writing Sensational Vancouver and it was great to see their work highlighted. I didn’t know that Hollingsworth and Pratt designed furniture, Kiss made pottery, or that cartoonist Len Norris was originally an architectural draftsman.

Len Norris, 1955. Reproduced from the original

Ned Pratt of Thompson Berwick Pratt, may be the most important architect to come out of Vancouver. He hired and mentored some of the most influential architects of the time—Erickson, Thom, Downs, Hollingsworth all cut their teeth at TBP.

Pratt’s crowning achievement was winning the commission to design the B.C. Electric building on Burrard Street—a game changer in the early 1950s.

Fred Herzog photo of B.C. Electric building in 1959

Pratt built his own home on an acre lot in the British Properties in the ‘50s.

When Peter Pratt, also an architect, took over the house after his father’s death, it had started to leak and rot. “I don’t know how many times I heard ‘it’s a tear down Pratt you can’t save it’,” he said in Sensational Vancouver. “This is our home, it’s not so much an asset, it’s our home. It has a sense of place.”

Peter Pratt in front of the mural designed by Ned Pratt and Ron Thom made from paper, coloured dyes and fibreglass. Eve Lazarus photo, 2015

Peter not only saved much of the family home, he built his own post-and-beam home right next door.

Hollingsworth just died a few months ago at age 98. His wife Phyllis still lives in the North Vancouver house he designed in1946.

Barry Downs, who was recently awarded the Order of Canada, still lives with his wife Mary in the gorgeous West Vancouver house he designed for them in 1979.

Eve Lazarus and Barry Downs. Tom Carter photo, 2015

A huge Gordon Smith painting hangs in the dining room. The artist is a good friend of the Downs’ and lives nearby in a house designed by Arthur Erickson.

Ironically, Erickson, who was probably the most famous of all, chose not to design his own house, but bought a large corner lot with a small cottage and a garage in Point Grey out of which he created a 900-square-foot home, and lived there for 52 years.

Arthur Erickson. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1972

The West Vancouver Museum is at 680-17^th Street in West Vancouver. It’s located inside the Gertrude Lawson House, a 1940 stone house built in the Colonial Revival Style.

Tags Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, B.C. Electric building, Barry Downs, Bill Reid, Fred Hollingsworth, Gordon Smith, Jack Shadbolt, John Fulker, Len Norris, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Sensational Vancouver, Thompson Berwick Pratt, West Coast modern, Zoltan Kill

Arthur Erickson’s House and Garden are on the Endangered List

by Eve Lazarus on January 10, 2015

Arthur Erickson is one of Canada’s most famous architects, yet his own house and garden ranks #8 on Heritage Vancouver’s top 10 endangered sites for 2014.

Erickson's house on West 14th. Selwyn Pullan Photo, 1959 — Erickson’s house on West 14th. Selwyn Pullan Photo, 1959

Arthur Erickson’s fingerprints are all over some of Metro Vancouver’s most iconic buildings—the Museum of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University and dozens of residential houses.

Unusual for an architect, Erickson chose not to design his own house, but bought a large corner lot in Point Grey with a 1924 cottage and garage for $11,000 out of which he created the 900-square-foot home where he lived for the next 52 years.

“Architecturally this house is terrible, but it serves as a refuge, a kind of decompression chamber,” he told author Edith Iglauer*.

Museum of Anthropology — Margaret Trudeau with Arthur Erickson and Elvi Whittaker, 1976. Photo John Morris, UBC Library

He replaced the walls with sliding glass and connected the buildings, adding a bathroom and a kitchen. He played with different materials—leather tiles on the bathroom wall, wall tiles in Italian suede in the living room, and Thai silk in the study—and then he turned his attention to the garden.

Erickson bulldozed the English garden, dug a hole for the pond and used the dirt to make a hill high enough to block the view of his house from his neighbours.

“Everybody in the neighbourhood thought I was excavating to build a house, and chatted with me over the picket fence, very happy to believe that they were no longer going to have a nonconformist garage dweller among them,” he told Iglauer*.

He planted grasses and rushes from the Fraser River, pine trees from the forest, put in 10 different species of bamboo, and added rhododendrons, a dogwood, and a persimmon to the existing fruit trees. He was known for throwing lavish garden parties that drew a guest list ranging from Pierre Trudeau to Rudolf Nureyev

Barry Downs lived in the Dunbar area at the time and knew Erickson quite well.

“We both had little ponds full of fish and one day Mary and I gave him a turtle,” said Downs. “He phoned me up and said ‘get over here your turtle is eating my fish!’”

Down’s told him that was impossible, the turtle had a mouth the size of Erickson’s thumb.

“I went over and sure enough there’s a fish sticking out of its mouth,” said Downs, adding that yes he took the turtle back.

“Arthur was ruthless. He had a BB gun and would shoot at the herons that would come in and land and eat his fish. Once he told me that he shot through the neighbour’s window accidently,” says Downs.

Downs says the impressive Japanese-inspired marble terrace panels in the garden are the toilet stalls from the old Hotel Vancouver.

Erickson may have been a talented architect but he was hopeless with finances. By 1992 he had racked up over $10 million in debt and was on the verge of losing his house. A group of friends which included Peter Wall, who took over the $475,000 mortgage, placed the house and garden in the hands of the Arthur Erickson Foundation. Erickson lived there until his death in 2009.

*Iglauer, Edith. Seven Stones: A Portrait of Arthur Erickson, Architect. Harbour Publishing, 1981.

Tags 4195 West 14th, Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, Edith Iglauer, Elvi Whittaker, Heritage Vancouver, Margaret Trudeau, Mary Downs, Museum of Anthropology, Selwyn Pullan, Sensational Vancouver, Simon Fraser University

The Top 10 Most Expensive Houses in BC: nine are in Vancouver

by Eve Lazarus on January 2, 2015

If you’re a property owner in Metro Vancouver and looking for relief in this year’s property tax bill, well let’s just say it’s not going to happen. For property owners living in one of the priciest regions of the country—the West Coast real estate market keeps going up—and so does your bill.

The good news is that BC Assessment also released the 500 most expensive properties in the province today, and it gives you a glimpse into how the rich get richer.

Number 1:

Kitsilano tops the list with Lululemon founder Chip Wilson’s new 30,000+ SF home coming in at just under $58 million.

The second most expensive house comes with its own island (James Island) 780 acres, private docks and six guest cottages.

Belmont Avenue:

Five of the houses are on Belmont Avenue and all are new except for one from the ‘80s. In fact, with the exception of the 10th most expensive house on Point Grey Road built in 1962 there is only one heritage house in the exclusive top 10, which probably isn’t surprising given the frantic way we’ve been bulldozing these old beauties.

1388 The Crescemt — The Hollies at 1388 The Crescent in Shaughnessy is the 7th most expensive house in B.C.

The Hollies:

Number 7 on the list is the Hollies at 1388 The Crescent, and the only house in the top 10 from Shaughnessy. At $27.4 million it’s less than a half the value of Chip Wilson’s sprawling modern mansion and the only one on the heritage inventory.

The Hollies

I wrote about The Hollies in At Home with History. The heritage inventory describes the 13,000 SF house as a “rambling Neoclassical Revival structure.” The house was built in 1912 by George E. MacDonald, general manager of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway. With its giant entrance and huge columns, it looks like it would be at home on some exclusive Greek island.

It’s deceptive from the front gate, but inside, the mansion has six bedrooms, five fireplaces, an indoor pool designed by Arthur Erickson in the ‘80s, a putting green, tennis courts, a playground, and a coach house. The MacDonald’s sold the house and its two acres of land in 1921 and it changed hands several times until 1950 when it became a guest house. At one point the owners paid their property taxes by renting out the mansion as a wedding reception hall.

Ironically, considering the exclusion of “Orientals” in the first stage of Shaughnessy’s development, in 1991 the address changed from 1350 to 1388 The Crescent to attract Asian buyers.

Tags 1388 the Cresent, 3085 Point Grey Road, Arthur Erickson, At Home with History, BC Assessment, Chip Wilson, George E. MacDonald, James Island, The Hollies

The incredible photography of Selwyn Pullan

by Eve Lazarus on August 16, 2014

Selwyn Pullan, photographer — Selwyn Pullan in his studio, 2008. Kenneth Dyck photo

I’ve been posting pictures of the BC Electric Building on Facebook this week, but I haven’t posted this one—it’s on the back of Sensational Vancouver and in the chapter on West Coast Modern. The photo was shot by Selwyn Pullan in 1957, the same year BC Electric completed this ground breaking piece of architecture.

While Ned Pratt and Ron Thom were designing the BC Electric building and other west coast modern architects such as Arthur western living 1961 Erickson and Barry Downs were producing buildings full of glass and angles and natural materials built to expand into spaces in ways unseen before, it was Selwyn Pullan who captured their vision.

Selwyn studied under Ansel Adams at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, and after moving back to Vancouver he became a sought after commercial photographer, working for magazines such as Western Homes and Living, Macleans and Architectural Digest.

“I just look at the house and photograph it,” he told me. “I don’t have any preconceptions when I photograph, it’s a journalistic assignment not a photographic one.”

Many of Selwyn’s photos are in my book, and so is he. He’s over 90 now and still living in the North Vancouver house he bought in 1952. Pullan asked Fred Hollingsworth to design a carport. The finished structure looks more like a plane than a garage, and that’s interesting not just from an architectural point of view, but because he and Hollingsworth used to make model airplanes together as teens. Pullan says Hollingsworth still does.

Selwyn Pullan's studio. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1960 — Selwyn Pullan’s studio. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1960

In 1960 when Pullan needed a multi-purpose studio and darkroom for his growing photographing business, he sought out Hollingsworth again. Rather then add another room to the house, the architect created a covered passageway that led from the house and flowed down the slope of the property. He designed a two-level studio with floor-to-ceiling windows and concrete floors that blend seamlessly with the landscape.It was here in 1969 that Selwyn shot the paintings for Lawren Harris’s book, from the artist’s early days with the Group of Seven through to his abstract period in Vancouver. Selwyn refused to shoot them anywhere except his studio and only when he was alone. The paintings would be trucked to his studio in batches, taken away and a new group brought in. Harris, who lived on ritzy Belmont Avenue in Vancouver, died the following year. Cover image by DRK Design. To see more of his work, see Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Mid-Century West Coast Modern, Douglas & McIntyre, 2012.

Tags Ansel Adams, Architectural Digest, Art Center School, Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Electric, Fred Hollingsworth, Lawren Harris, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Sensational Vancouver, Western Homes and Living

West Coast Modern and Architect Barry Downs

by Eve Lazarus on July 5, 2014

Barry Downs architect designed his gorgeous West Coast Modern house in West Vancouver in 1979. He lived there until his death in July 2022 at 92.

From Sensational Vancouver

Barry Downs and the West Coast modern house he designed in 1979

Barry Downs house sits on top of a cliff 120 feet above West Vancouver’s Garrow Bay. The house is almost invisible from the busy street and built on multiple levels, with lots of glass that connects the indoors with the out.

Rapidly disappearing:

Most people don’t think of these gorgeous mid-century homes as “heritage,” but many are listed on the Heritage Register. Because they are typically small houses on large view lots, they are rapidly disappearing.

Barry figures we’ve lost about 50 percent of our mid-century housing stock.

Each step through the Downs’ house is like a journey of discovery. A window in the bathroom looks out onto the forest. Another window gives a view of Bowen Island, and another a glimpse of the rocky exterior. But it’s not until you step into the dining room that you can truly understand the brilliance of Barry’s design. The Strait of Georgia, Vancouver Island and the B.C. Coast line leaps out through floor to ceiling glass windows, and just for a moment it’s disorienting, like being suspended in space.

Marine Drive, West Vancouver. Barry Downs photo

Focus on the landscape:

“To me, it’s all to do with emotion, and you derive that from the building and its setting,” says Barry. “The focus for me has always been the landscape, the garden, the seasonal world.”

Barry trained at Thompson, Berwick and Pratt and worked with some of the city’s most exciting and imaginative architects. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick and B.C. Binning, at one time all worked under the guidance of Ned Pratt. Barry left to form a partnership with Fred Hollingsworth in 1963, and six years later he and Richard Archambault launched their own company with residential houses as their mainstay.

Barry Downs architect

“We built on narrow lots with simple and affordable post and beam houses. We designed houses that pushed up through the trees, that revolved around the idea of the big room, surrounded by the garden, and the view of the changing seasons,” he says.

Barry, a softly spoken man now in his 80s, is as low key as the houses that he designs. He’d just like to see more of them remain.

Tags Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Barry Downs, Berwick Pratt, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick, Richard Archambault, Ron Thom, Sensational Vancouver, Thompson, West Vancouver Museum

Ned Pratt’s West Coast Modern House

by Eve Lazarus on October 6, 2013

Peter Pratt renovated and restored the house his father designed in 1953

I spent the afternoon with architect Peter Pratt at his home in the British Properties yesterday. Peter’s father Ned Pratt designed the house in the early 1950s and lived there for most of his life. You’ve likely never heard of Ned Pratt, I hadn’t until recently, and I find that really interesting because he may just be the most important architect to come out of Vancouver. Pratt was a principal at Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and he hired and mentored some of the most influential architects of the time. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Paul Merrick, Barry Downs, Fred Hollingsworth, and artist BC Binning, all worked there at one point.

It was Pratt who designed the BC Electric building (BC Hydro) on Burrard Street and the Dal Grauer Substation next door, both game changers in architectural design in those early ‘50s. Binning did the murals for the building and Pratt helped Binning build his West Vancouver home—the house credited for kick starting the West Coast modern movement in BC.

“Pratt convinced BC Electric that a local firm with no experience in skyscraper design could handle the monumental task,” wrote architectural critic Robin Ward, in Pratt’s 1996 obituary. The drawings alone, if spread out would have covered five city blocks, noted Ward.

Mural designed by Ned Pratt and Ron Thom

When Peter took over the one-acre property and his childhood home, the house had started to leak and rot. “I don’t know how many times I heard ‘it’s a tear down Pratt, you can’t save it,” he said. “This is our home, it’s not so much an asset, it’s our home. It has a sense of place.”

Against all advice he decided to save what he could and restore it, keeping features such as a mural that Pratt and Ron Thom made from fiberglass and paper. Peter has moved walls around, taken out rooms, added skylights and put cork on the floors. He added bench seats out of reclaimed wood from the Pantages Theatre to go with a table his dad built.

Then Peter built his own post and beam home right next door. One side of the newer house is sheer glass and opens up onto the garden and a large water feature filled with fish. A courtyard connects the two houses and there are angles everywhere you look that give hints of what’s to come, what Peter calls “a process of discovery” that’s characteristic of these West Coast modern homes.

Ned’s house is 1,200 sq.ft. Peter’s is only slightly larger. Both are a nod to simplicity and scale and the importance of landscape. Proof that we don’t have to rip down these beautiful houses because they don’t fill out the lot.

View from Ned Pratt's living room — View from Ned Pratt’s living room

Tags Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Binning, Fred Hollingsworth, Ned Pratt, Paul Merrick, Peter Pratt, Ron Thom, Thompson Berwick Pratt

Villa Russe

by Eve Lazarus on November 22, 2011

Looking for a mansion on the right side of town? 3390 The Crescent is on the market for $31.9 million. I’m guessing the owners are receptive to a lower bid, since as John Mackie points out, it was up for sale last year for only $17.9 million.

1922 Beaux Arts mansion — 3390 The Crescent

Wondering what one gets for $30 odd million in Vancouver? According to the real estate blurb that would be 10,000+ square feet of house nestled on an acre of land with the obligatory grand entry and sweeping staircase, as well as massive living room, five fireplaces, a master bedroom with not one, but three dressing rooms and quarters for the staff, who you’ll need to cook, clean, mow and provide maps to find your way to the games room, gym and cellar.

What it doesn’t say is that the stately mansion has a great story.

I wrote about this house and the Grauer family in At Home with History. The house was built in 1922 for Misak Yremavitch Aviazoff, a local money man and arts lover, and his wife Aileen. The Aivazoff’s loved to entertain and counted Grand Duke Alexander, Serge Rachmanioff, Prince Obelinsky among their guests.

Aviazoff, who is listed in the city directories as president of New Method Coal and Supplies, did not do well in the Depression. He and Aileen bumped around to different Shaughnessy addresses, likely short-term rentals, and by 1938 Aileen is a landlady at a West End apartment building.

H.A. Wallace, the ship builder bought the house from the Aivazoffs and lived there until 1946, when it changed hands again and BC Electric became the owner and Albert Edward (Dal) Grauer, head of the company and his family moved in.

3390 The Crescent — The Grauer Children in front of Villa Russe, 1958

Sherry Grauer was eight when she and three siblings moved into the house, which she describes as “Mediterranean”. Sherry, now an artist living on Vancouver Island, says the house only had three bedrooms (it now has six), so her father built an addition on the back and a pool with a cabana designed by family friend Arthur Erickson.

Sherry’s mother painted portraits and flowers and she remembers going upstairs to bed while her father played Chopin or Schubert on the piano.

By 1961, Dal Grauer, dying with leukemia, continued to battle the BC Government over its decision to take over the company (now BC Hydro). The government announced the takeover the day of Grauer’s funeral. Still, he managed to kick back from the grave. Sherry says her father incorporated his $2 million plus estate into a family company in another province and legally stiffed the government for estate taxes. “And that made Wacky Bennett very cross,” she said. Dal also left his stamp on the BC Electric Building (now the Elektra), built in 1957, and the Dal Grauer Substation.

John Mackie’s article: https://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+mansion+sale+million/5735598/story.html

See realtor’s listing at https://www.ecorealtyinc.ca/listing?id=259090654

Tags 3390 The Crescent, Aileen Aviazoff, Arthur Erickson, BC Electric, Dal Grauer, Grand Duke Alexander, Misak Yremavitch Aviazoff, New Method Coal and Supplies, Prince Obelinsky, Serge Rachmanioff, Sherry Grauer, Villa Russe

What is a Heritage Register?

by Eve Lazarus on August 6, 2011

For more tips on researching your home’s history see At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes

The District of North Vancouver has two heritage inventories—Modern Architecture (1930-1965) published in 1997, and one with houses that date prior to 1930 published in 1993. Both are hopelessly out of date, many houses no longer exist, and others that should have been included, were not.

And, because neither of the books is online, new home owners looking to renovate, update or rip down are often unpleasantly surprised to be hauled in front of the Heritage Commission because their modest post and beam was designed by Fred Thornton Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson or Ron Thom.

Built in 1911 by Thomas E. Christie — Christie House, 267 West Queens Road, North Vancouver

Several years ago the District hired heritage expert Donald Luxton to update the heritage inventory in preparation for a heritage register. He recommended that of the 354 sites in the inventory, 152 should be on the register. It’s something the Heritage Commission has been trying to get into public record for the more than three years I’ve been a member, and it finally went before Council at the end of January.

The first question Mayor Walton asked was why it’s taken so long.

Why indeed. There are tons of benefits for homeowners and it gives district staff some teeth when it comes to saving our heritage. It’s hard to see a downside.

Councilors Lisa Muri and Mike Little were both involved with heritage over the years and I liked their responses. “We owe it to the history of our community,” said Muri. “I don’t think in any way we’re impeding an owner’s rights to anything, we’re just giving them an option.”

Little was blunt. “Yes, we are intentionally adding red tape,” he said. “We’re doing it out of what we believe to be the interests of the broader community.”

Heritage Registry versus Heritage Inventory:

An inventory is simply a listing of houses and buildings deemed to have heritage value. If an owner wants to rip it down, there’s little that the district can do. A register would give staff the power to slap a temporary protection order on any of the 152 identified buildings and offer the owners some incentives to save them. It doesn’t restrict what an owner can do with their property, it doesn’t restrict the sale of the property, it won’t devalue the property—in fact it may even increase it.

Heritage Register versus Heritage Designation:

Councilors who argued against bringing in the heritage register seemed to be confused by its purpose. Having your house on a register is not the same as a heritage designation. In fact, there are only a handful of designated buildings in North Vancouver and the only way a building can become designated is if the homeowner requests it or if council compensates the owner for any monies lost due to the designation.

A house that is protected through a designation cannot be demolished and cannot be altered without council approval. But even slapped with a temporary protection order, if the owners want to add to, change or demolish a house on a register after the order expires, there’s nothing the district can do about it.

How does a House get on a Heritage Register?

Architecture is important, but it’s not everything. The Statement of Significance used to compile the listings has three sections: historic place, heritage value and character-defining elements. The idea is to explain why a historic place is important to the community from a social and cultural, as well as an architectural perspective. As Andre Kroeger, an architect and chair of the Heritage Commission notes, considerations for heritage value are typically historical value—the story; rarity or uniqueness; aesthetic value; cultural and scientific value—i.e. archeological.

Benefits of a Heritage Register listing:

Once a house is listed on a heritage registry its owners are eligible for foundation grants, municipal, provincial and federal incentives, tax credits and deferrals. The City of Vancouver, for instance, will sometimes relax zoning and development by-laws allowing owners of heritage buildings to do a variety of things that would otherwise not be allowed.

So, what’s the hold up?

It’s been eight months since Council gave district the go ahead and still no action. Apparently we have to wait until there’s a public information meeting for owners, even though it’s not legally required. Now with Council elections in November it’s unlikely anything will happen before then. But even if a meeting ever does eventuate, district staff will insist on churning out a report to Council and Council will likely have to meet again. Since Council will have a new face after the election, I’m betting we’ll be starting the whole process all over again….

Tags Andre Kroeger, Arthur Erickson, District of North Vancouver, Donald Luxton, Fred Thornton Hollingsworth, Heritage Commission, Heritage Inventory, Historic Places, Lisa Muri, Mike Little, Modern Architecture, Ron Thom, Statement of Significance, temporary protection order

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