BT Rogers

Vancouver’s Monkey Puzzle Tree Obsession

by Eve Lazarus on March 24, 2018

We probably have more monkey puzzle trees in BC than in all of their native Chile. The quirky trees started arriving in gardens in the 1920s.

In 2012, I wrote a book called Sensational Victoria and one of my favourite chapters was Heritage Gardens. I visited and then wrote about large rich-people’s gardens like Hatley Park, and smaller ones like the Abkhazi Garden on Fairfield road built on the back of a love story. There was Carole Sabiston’s beautiful garden on Rockland Avenue anchored by a 100-year-old purple lilac tree, and the garden Brian and Jennifer Rogers created around their century-old Samuel Maclure designed horse stable. (Brian is the grandson of BT Rogers, the Vancouver sugar king, and another ardent gardener).

Nellie McClung at her Ferndale Road home in 1949. Courtesy Saanich Archives

On the back cover of the book, there’s a photo of Nellie McClung standing in front of a giant monkey puzzle tree at the house she retired to at Gordon Head in 1935.

Lurancy Harris, the first female police officer in Canada, built her house on Venables in 1916. When I went to photograph it, the now two-storey house was dwarfed by a monkey puzzle tree that she’d planted in her front garden.

Lurancy Harris built 1836 Venables in 1916 and planted herself a monkey tree.

I’ve always had a thing for monkey puzzle trees—they seem to go particularly well with turrets, old houses and great stories. But I’ve never given them much thought until I was chatting with Christine Allen this morning about her upcoming talk for the Vancouver Historical Society next month. Christine—another Australian transplant—is a master gardener. She tells me that there was a huge craze for monkey puzzles trees here in the 1920s and 1930s.

“People were very proud of their monkey puzzle trees. It was so Victorian, they loved that kind of odd ball stuff,” she says. “There is a tiny post-war bungalow in my neighbourhood (Grandview) where somebody planted two massive ones on the south side of the house. That house gets no sun ever.”

Christine says the trees got their name because even a monkey would find it a puzzle to climb.

Bowen Island Inn in the 1930s with a massive monkey puzzle tree. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Christine says that another reason why these Chilean pines were so popular is because of Vancouver’s mild climate that allows us to grow anything from arctic tundra plants to palm trees.

But it’s not just people, towns are proud of them to. The tiny town of Holberg on Vancouver Island boasts the world’s tallest monkey puzzle tree. I have no idea how tall it is now, but in 1995 it was measured at 77 feet—that’s higher than a seven-storey building.

Nellie McClung’s home was known as Lantern Lane after the books she wrote in her upstairs study. Courtesy Saanich Archives, 1960

Tags Abkhazi Garden, Brian Rogers, BT Rogers, Carole Sabiston, Christine Allen, Lurancy Harris, Nellie McClung, Samuel Maclure, Sensational Victoria

Our missing heritage: the forgotten buildings of Bruce Price (1845-1903)

by Eve Lazarus on September 30, 2017

In the 1970s, the Scotia Tower and the hideous Vancouver Centre—currently home to London Drugs—obliterated a block of beautiful heritage buildings at Granville and Georgia Streets. The development took out the Strand Theatre (built in 1920), and the iconic Birks building, an 11-storey Edwardian where generations of Vancouverites met at the clock.

The Birks building and the second and third Hotel Vancouver in 1946. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 586-4615

I was surprised to discover that when the Birks building opened in 1913, it took out three of Vancouver’s earliest office buildings, including the four-storey Sir Donald Smith block (named for Lord Strathcona) and designed by Bruce Price in 1888.

The Donald Smith building opposite the first Hotel Vancouver at Granville and Georgia in 1899. Courtesy Vancouver Archives Bu P60

According to Building the West, New York-based Price was one of the most fashionable architects of the late 19^th century. He was the CPR’s architect of choice for a number of Canadian buildings, and although he designed several imposing buildings in Vancouver between 1886 and 1889, not one of them remains today.

The Van Horne block (named for the president of the CPR) at Granville and Dunsmuir, later became the Colonial Theatre, and one of Con Jone’s Don’t Argue tobacco stores, before becoming another casualty of the Pacific Centre in 1972 (see Past Tense blog for more information).

Originally known as the Van Horne building at 601-603 Granville, built in 1888/89. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 447-399 in 1972.

Price also designed the Crewe Block in the 600-block Granville: “built of brick and granite, with sixteen-inch pilasters running the height of the three-storey structure”* It lasted until 2001.

The granite-faced New York block (658 Granville) which Price designed in 1888, and the Daily World described as “the grandest building of its kind yet erected here, or for that matter in the Dominion,” would be replaced by the existing Hudson’s Bay store in the 1920s. According to the 1890 city directory, the building had a mixture of residents and businesses including the Dominion Brewing and Bottling Works, the CPR telegraph office, and John Milne Browning, the commissioner for the CPR Land Department.

Browning lived at West Georgia and Burrard in a stone and brick duplex that Price designed, described as “Double Cottage B.”* According to Changing Vancouver, sugar baron BT Rogers bought the property in 1906, and had the house lifted, enlarged and turned into a hotel called the Glencoe Lodge.

The Brownings home in 1899 would become part of the Glencoe Lodge. Courtesy Vancouver Archives Bu N414

The hotel was torn down to make way for a gas station in the early 1930s, and 40 years later, was bought up by the Royal Centre and is now the uninspiring Royal Bank building.

*source: Building the West: early architects of British Columbia

The Last of the West End Mansions

by Eve Lazarus on May 4, 2013

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.

Built in 1901 for BT Rogers, the Sugar King — Gabriola in 1904

I wrote about Vancouver’s West End mansions at the turn-of-the-century in At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes. Back then the West End was the place where the wealthy flittered from manor to manor, presenting calling cards, and sipping on lemonade while playing croquet and badminton on manicured lawns.

In 1908 a book with the unlikely title of the Vancouver Elite Directory, reported that 86% of those who rated a listing lived in the West End, while 6% lived downtown and the rest were scattered throughout Point Grey, Kitsilano and Fairview, with a few holdouts still in the East End.

The Abbott House at 720 Jervis was saved when the city gave developers the go-ahead to build two extra floors on each tower as a heritage density bonus in exchange for saving and renovating the old mansion. Unfortunately, the heritage density transfer, which could help save the West End, is a distant memory.

The Legg residence was built in 1899 — 1245 Harwood Street

Gordon T. Legg, the managing director of the Union Steamship Company lived at 1245 Harwood, a gorgeous arts and crafts house built in 1899, and right next door to the largest known Tulip tree in the city. Originally the city did a deal with the devil, where the house would be saved in return for a 18-storey tower. It wasn’t a bad compromise, but the pending loss of the 100-year-old Tulip tree upset the neighbours, and in the latest bizarre scenario, we are saving a tree to sacrifice the century-old mansion.

It is a tragic loss to the West End, which as Heritage Vancouver points out, is one of only three estate homes that remain from the turn of the last century, the others are three heritage homes on Davie Street, and the one that I’m most upset about–Gabriola at 1523 Davie.

Most people remember Gabriola as a Hy’s Mansion or a Romano’s Macaroni Grill, but it was originally designed in 1900 by Samuel Maclure for Benjamin Tingley Rogers, the Sugar King. At one time the mansion occupied the entire block with stables, outbuildings and greenhouses. Stained glass was created by the Bloomfields, it had 18 fireplaces, and got its name from the green sandstone on the outside that was quarried on Gabriola Island.

The mansion has been boarded up for several years. Keg Restaurants bought it and announced plans for a restaurant back in 2011. But Gabriola still sits vacant, a target for vandals and a wet dream for developers.

For more on the West End see:

Tags 1245 Harwood Street, 1523 Davie Street, BT Rogers, Gabriola, Gordon T. Legg, Heritage Vancouver

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