B.T. Rogers

Our Missing Heritage: The original Vancouver Club and the Metropolitan Building

by Eve Lazarus on April 23, 2016

The Metropolitan Building and the Vancouver Club — Photo courtesy City of Vancouver Archives Bu-N339

Love this photo taken in 1921 from Howe Street looking down West Hastings. The big building closest to the photographer is the Metropolitan at 837 West Hastings. It was built in 1912 to house the Metropolitan Club which then became the Terminal City Club and the building lasted until 1998. It was replaced with a 30-storey building called the Terminal City Tower. We also lost the beautiful lamp standards as well as the building next to it—which was the original Vancouver Club, built in 1893 and with members who lived close by back then, and included people such as Henry Ceperley, B.T. Rogers, Alfred St. George Hamersley, Gerry McGeer, Wendell Farris, H.R. MacMillan, and the building’s architect Charles Wickenden.

The original Vancouver Club — Vancouver Club, 901 West Hastings. Photo courtesy VPL 19838 ca.1893

The second Vancouver Club, which is still there, was built in 1913.

It seems amazing now, but in 1914 there were seven men’s clubs all in fairly close proximity. The Vancouver Club was made up of the city’s elite, while the Terminal City Club attracted a scrappier crowd that had to earn their own money. Others were the University Club at Cordova and Seymour, the Commercial Club in the Vancouver Block, the Public Schools Club at 700 Cambie Street, the United Services Club at 1255 Pender, and the Western Club at Dunsmuir and Hornby.

Photo courtesy CVA 447-300 1930 (thanks Jason Vanderhill) — Photo courtesy CVA 447-300 1930

When the Vancouver Club took its members to the new building at 915 West Hastings, the 72^nd Seaforth Highlanders Regiment moved in and stayed until 1918 after which the building became the home of the Great War Veterans Association, and in 1925, the Quadra Club.

Vancouver Club demolition party, 1930 CVA677-69

Jason Vanderhill sent me a couple of links to photos of the old Vancouver Club, which he had zoomed in on and found some interesting signage. “On the left you can see the new Vancouver Club; on the right, the telltale notice of development!” notes Jason. “I can barely read the signs, but I can just make out on the left, the sign starts out: “Be proud to live in Vancouver, some very small print. Pemberton & Son. On the right, the sign says: ‘This property to be developed on expiry of existing lease. Will sell for $375,000 For space see Pemberton & Son’.”

It seems that even 85 years ago we were flogging houses with the demolition permit attached.

The Vancouver Club — Photo courtesy City of Vancouver Archives 677-66 1930

And, as the photos show, the old Vancouver Club came down in 1930, and its tenant the Quadra Club moved to 1021 West Hastings, near the spanking new Marine Building.

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Tags 72nd Seaforth Highlanders Regiment, 837 West Hastings, 901 West Hastings, 915 West Hastings, Alfred St. George Hamersley, B.T. Rogers, Charles Wickenden, Gerry McGeer, Great War Veterans Association, H.R. MacMillan, Henry Ceperley, Metropolitan Club, Pemberton & Son, Quadra Club, Terminal City Club, Vancouver Club, Wendell Farris

Heritage Streeters with Caroline Adderson, Heather Gordon, and Eve Lazarus

by Eve Lazarus on April 3, 2015

In February heritage men told us their favourite building and the one building we should have saved. To keep the world in balance, I’ve asked the same question of women working in and with heritage—our answers may surprise you.

Caroline Adderson is an award-winning Vancouver author and the person behind Vancouver Vanishes.

Favourite Vancouver building?

My current favourite house is 3825 West 39^th Avenue, built in 1937 by Jack Wood, who was the builder responsible for all the Dunbar castle houses. The house he built for himself next door and featured in the Vancouver Sun at 3815 West 39^th Avenue was demolished in early March with almost no reclamation of materials. In the article John Atkin describes the style of the Dunbar castles as “a variation of the French Normandy style popular after World War I. The turret is the grain silo of the original (French) farm house repurposed to make a grand entrance.”

I’d argue that 3825 West 39^this the prettier of the sisters because of the shingle roof and the Tudor elements. Like the Dorothies, which were saved from demolition last year, this house just lights up the street. It seems to exude stories. But not for long. As I was walking past the house this morning, I met a pair of surveyors who confirmed it’s slated for demolition.

Caroline's runner-up for favourite “house” still standing is 3492 ½ West 35th. It’s a sort of rondavel constructed out of firewood, driftwood, plywood, cinderblocks, tarpaper and stones, with fanciful ornamentation. "I haven’t been inside because, as you can see, no “gurls” are “aloud”. — Caroline’s runner-up for favourite “house” still standing is 3492 ½ West 35th. It’s a sort of rondavel constructed out of firewood, driftwood, plywood, cinderblocks, tarpaper and stones, with fanciful ornamentation. “I haven’t been inside because, as you can see, no “gurls” are “aloud”.

The one building that never should have been destroyed?

Please see my Facebook Page Vancouver Vanishes.

Heather Gordon is the City Archivist for the City of Vancouver Archives.

Favourite Vancouver building?

Beaconsfield Apartments ca1910 CVA M-11-57

The Beaconsfield at 884 Bute Street is one of a number of West End apartment buildings built in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Every one of these blocks has its own idiosyncrasies and surprises, but I love the Arts and Crafts balconies on the otherwise very-Victorian Beaconsfield, and the way the building integrates with the park-like traffic-calmed block of Bute outside its entrance.

The one building that never should have been destroyed?”

The Glencoe Lodge at Georgia and Burrard was a residential hotel built by B.T. Rogers in 1906 and managed by Jean Mollison, who was known a the “grand Chatelaine,” because according to a 1951 newspaper article, she had previously managed the Chateau Lake Louise. Under her guidance, Glencoe Lodge attracted a highly exclusive clientele, even more so than the C.P.R.’s Hotel Vancouver. The Lodge was demolished in the early 1930s, but if it had lasted longer, I can’t help but wonder if it might have become part of a really interesting development on that corner.

Eve Lazarus is the author of Sensational Vancouver and the person behind Every Place has a Story.

Favourite Vancouver building?

With Aaron Chapman on the 2014 VHF heritage house tour

It was a huge thrill to get inside Casa Mia on the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s house tour last year. Built smack in the middle of the Depression from the proceeds of rum running, this old girl still has the nursery with original drawings from Walt Disney artists, it’s own gold leaf covered ballroom with a spring dance floor, a gold swan for a faucet, and art deco his and hers washrooms.

The one building that never should have been destroyed?

Joe Fortes (1863-1922) — Joe Fortes Beach Avenue cottage CVA BuP111

We honoured Joe Fortes with a fountain in Alexandra Park, but how much more awesome would it have been, if we’d kept his house? Not only would it have been one of the oldest structures in Vancouver, it could have made both a great little museum for black history in Vancouver and for the houses that once dotted the water side of Beach Avenue. Instead it went up in flames in 1928.

Who was Maxine?

by Eve Lazarus on September 13, 2014

John Atkin can be a bit of a kill joy, always squashing rumours about secret tunnels in Chinatown, ghosts in the Dominion Building, and well, blood in Blood Alley. John squashes another rumour in his story about a tunnel that supposedly connected a sugar baron to a brothel, but in doing so he uncovered some fascinating information about Maxine MacGilvray, a successful businesswoman who moved to Vancouver in 1914. This article originally ran on John’s blog What Floats to the Top of My Desk.

By John Atkin

I recently had the pleasure of leading a walk in the West End for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation as part of their Sunday coffee series at JJ Bean.

The cafe’s newest location on Bidwell sits behind the preserved facade of Maxine’s Beauty School. The question that’s most often asked is if there was a tunnel that connected the Rogers’ mansion Gabriola on Davie with a bootlegging operation and/or brothel based out of Maxine’s.

1215 Bidwell Street, Vancouver — CVA 99-4477 Stuart Thomson photo, 1936

Apart from the general absurdity of the idea – the elevation change between Gabriola and Maxine’s would have made a tunnel an incredibly expensive engineering feat—Maxine’s was built in 1936—long after prohibition ended in BC and three years after it was repealed south of the border. There was no need for a bootlegging operation, let alone tunnels in the building, and the idea that a tunnel was used by sugar magnate B.T. Rogers to access a bordello from his home makes no sense because Rogers died in 1918.

Gabriola, 1904 VPL 7161. Philip Timms photo.

The idea of the brothel probably stems from the sexy sounding name Maxine’s, but while sexy, it was still just a beauty school. Instead of a silly cliche, what we do have is a story of an enterprising woman who built a successful series of businesses here and in Vancouver and Seattle. I think she deserves some recognition.

So who was Maxine?

Maxine’s was named after Maxine E. MacGilvray from Wisconsin. Her name first appears here in connection with beauty products sold by Spencer’s department store in 1914. Trained in California, she gave talks on skin care at the store and would later open the first of her parlors in the store.

Maxine started with a hair salon in the 600 block of Dunsmuir, opened her second location in the 1920s on the ground floor of a house at 1211 Bidwell Street, and followed this with the opening of the Maxine College of Beauty Culture next door. Maxine manufactured her own beauty products in a small factory at 999 East Georgia Street called the Max Chemical Company.

She hired Ivor Ewan Bebb, a young Welshman who came to Canada in 1924 as her apprentice. Four years later Maxine, 36, and Ivor, 26, were married in Washington State. In 1931 the company moved to 1223 Bidwell to join her other enterprises and was renamed the Max-Ivor Company.

The couple hired architect Thomas B. McArravy to design a new building to replace the original school on Bidwell in 1935. The design is a cute Mission Revival building which was expanded in 1940 by architect Ross Lort. This is the preserved facade we see today.

The Vancouver beauty school closed in 1942 and the couple converted it into the Maxine Apartments. By the late 1940s, advertisements show it as an apartment hotel, and later as a full blown motel. In 1943, Maxine and Ivor opened the Max-Ivor Motel at 4^th Avenue South in Seattle. The motel had 20 rooms, maid service and steam heat. Maxine died in 1952 and Ivor moved to Seattle to run an expanded Max-Ivor motel.

Sources: 1940 US Census, Skagit County marriage licences, immigration records, Vancouver World newspaper, BC Directories and Chuck Flood’s book, Washington’s Highway 99

Tags B.T. Rogers, Dominion Building, Gabriola, Ivor Ewan Bebb, John Atkin, Max-Ivor Company, Maxine Apartments, Maxine MacGilvray, Maxine's Beauty School, Spencer's department store, Thomas B. McArravy, Vancouver Heritage Foundation

On Film: Vancouver at Work and at Play

by Eve Lazarus on January 27, 2011

As the archivist for the CBC in Vancouver, Colin Preston looks after more than 250,000 items and programmes on film and videotape. And, as he’ll tell you, it’s the best historical archive of film footage west of Toronto.

Preston says that over the last decade staff has been shoveling all this archival material into a common database that’s searchable through the CBC’s Intranet. The hope is that one day it will eventually be publicly accessible through the Internet.

Still, it’s a wonderful source of information about a much older Vancouver and it’s another source for anyone looking for footage of an old house or neighbourhood.

Tags B.T. Rogers, CBC Vancouver, Colin Preston, Hycroft, Shannon Mews, University Women's Club, Vancouver Historical Society

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