Charles Marega

Behind the Wall at the Hotel Vancouver

by Eve Lazarus on November 27, 2021

Beatrice Lennie created a mural for the Hotel Vancouver’s lobby in 1939. It’s been hidden behind a wall since 1967. This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History .

Beatrice Lennie:

When Beatrice Lennie graduated from the first class at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) in 1929, it took four piano movers to shift her diploma piece. She called it “Spirit of Mining.”

Beatrice (1905-1987) studied under Fred Varley, JWG Macdonald and Charles Marega. In 1975, she told a Province reporter that Marega had sculpted a Queen Anne ceiling for her family’s Shaughnessy home on Matthews Avenue around 1910. “It was a large decorative oval with high relief of laurel. Our ceiling was much more beautiful than Hycroft or Alvo von Alvensleben’s,” she said. “I was just a little girl when our house was built but I can vaguely remember the ceiling all coming in pieces.”

Studying sculpture:

Beatrice was the daughter of R.S. Lennie, a barrister who headed up the Lennie Commission—an enquiry into corruption in the Vancouver Police Department in 1928. Her wealthy family was horrified by her chosen career, and she received little emotional or financial support from them. “If I’d been a singer, they’d have sent me to Italy,” she told the Province. “Sculpture was not respectable or ladylike. Singing was acceptable but a woman’s place was in the home. There was terrible discrimination. Women had to be better than men. For one job I was on the scaffold at eight in the morning. I came down and just dropped in the evening. I had to prove something.”

Clydemont Centre, 307 West Broadway, 1978. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Hotel Vancouver Commission:

In 1939, the Canadian National Railway commissioned Beatrice to create a 3.7 metre sculpture on the main floor of the new Hotel Vancouver. Called Ascension, it was finished in blue steel, brass and chromium. But when the hotel renovated the lobby in 1967, Beatrice’s sculpture and two elevators were left on the wrong side of the new wall. “I used to think sculpture would outlive you, but they bordered up one of mine,” she said eight years later. “They covered it with a wooden wall when they lowered the ceiling. It’s discouraging in one’s own lifetime.”

While you won’t be able to catch a glimpse of Ascension until the next Hotel Vancouver lobby renovation, you can see some of Beatrice’s work around Vancouver.

The Clydemont Centre, 307 West Broadway. Commissioned in 1949 when the building was the Vancouver Labour Temple.

Asclepius, 1951 at 1807 West 10th Avenue. Leonard Frank photo via City of Vancouver

Beatrice’s reliefs were originally at the entrance to the former Shaughnessy Hospital in 1940 when it was built as a health facility for World War 11 veterans. It’s now in the courtyard off the cafeteria at 4500 Oak Street.

Originally the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC at 1807 West 10^th Avenue, Beatrice created Asclepius in 1951. In Greek mythology, Asclepius is the god of healing and medicine.

Sources:

Province, February 28, 1975

Province, August 1, 1975

Murray Maisey, Vancouver as it Was: A Photo History Journey blog

John Steil and Aileen Stalker, Public Art in Vancouver: Angels Among Lions. Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2009

Eve Lazarus, Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020

Tags Alvo von Alvensleben, Ascension, Asclepius, Beatrice Lennie, Charles Marega, Clydemont Centre, College of Physicans and Surgeons, Fred Varley, Hotel Vancouver, Hycroft, JWG Macdonald, Robert Lennie, Shaughnessy Hospital, Vancouver Labour Temple

The First Vancouver Art Gallery

by Eve Lazarus on January 22, 2021

Before the Vancouver Art Gallery moved into the old courthouse on West Georgia, its home was a gorgeous art deco building a few blocks away.

1145 West Georgia Street, 1931. Courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery

If you live in Vancouver, you know that the Vancouver Art Gallery is housed in the old law courts, an imposing neo-classical building designed by celebrity architect Francis Rattenbury in 1906. What you may not know, was that the VAG started out in a gorgeous art deco building at 1145 West Georgia, a few blocks west from its current location.

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Site of the “new” VAG. April 1931, CVA 99-3870

The original 1931 building—the same year the VAG was founded—was designed by local architects Sharp and Thompson. George Sharp, a respected artist and founding faculty member of the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts designed the building to fit perfectly into the largely residential West End neighborhood. It had a main hall, two large galleries and two smaller ones with a sculpture hall, library and lecture hall.

VAG Sculpture Court, 1931. CVA Bu-P400.8

Charles Marega won the commission to sculpt the heads of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci that flanked the front door. Marega carved the names of those who were considered great painters of the times (none were Canadian and all were men).

After the war, Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris, who lived on ritzy Belmont Avenue, raised $300,000, and the building was expanded to three times its original size to accommodate the works of Emily Carr and some of Harris’s own paintings. The Art Deco façade disappeared and Marega’s sculptures were no longer considered appropriate for the new sleeker modern building.

Vancouver School of Art exhibit, June 1931. CVA 99-3952

The VAG ran a classified ad in the Province in July 1951 offering the sculptures for sale. If they didn’t sell, the plan was to throw them out. Rumour has it that they found a home somewhere in the Lower Mainland – and if you happen to have them in your backyard, please let me know!

The newly renovated version, 1958. Courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery

In 1983, the VAG moved into its current digs at the old courthouse taking with it $15 million in art. Two years later the original building was demolished. Now the Paradox Hotel (former Trump tower) and the FortisBC Centre straddle its old space.

For more in Our Missing Heritage Series see:

Our Missing Heritage (part one) The Georgia Medical & Dental Building and the Devonshire Hotel

Our Missing West Coast Modern Heritage (Part two)

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

Our Missing Heritage (part six)

Tags 1145 West Georgia Street, Charles Marega, emily carr, Francis Rattenbury, George Sharp, Lawren Harris, Sharp and Thompson, Vancouver Art Gallery

Our Missing Heritage: The Centennial Fountain

by Eve Lazarus on November 14, 2020

BC Centennial Fountain, 1969. Vancouver Archives 780-62

In 2014, the Centennial fountain that sat outside the former Vancouver courthouse was removed after nearly half a century. It had been turned off the year before after a leak was found in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s storage area. While the new, sterile looking plaza hasn’t been wholeheartedly embraced, neither was the fountain when it was designed by Robert Savery, a landscape gardener employed by the provincial government in 1966.

This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History.

Murals on hoarding around the VAG building, April 1966. Vancouver Archives

We had a Paint-in:

Vancouver turned 80 on April 6, 1966 and Mayor Bill Rathie held a paint-in. The event was a huge success and included over 100 art students who had signed up and been assigned spots along the hoarding. The art stayed up until the fountain was revealed the following December.

The fountainless public space in front of the VAG in 2020. Eve Lazarus photo

The Big Reveal:

The Centennial fountain was a $45,000 gift to the City of Vancouver. It featured a 4.8 metre marble sculpture designed by artist Alex von Svoboda, blue and green mosaic tiles with colours that changed at night, and pumped out over 1.3 million litres of water an hour. The local artistic community were outraged and said the government should keep out of the fountain business and put all public art to a competition. “[Government] employees aren’t qualified to design works of art or sculpture. They are incompetent in these fields of art,” said Frank Low-Beer, chair of the community arts council committee.

They had a point, but I loved that fountain anyway.

The Centennial Fountain with view of the missing Devonshire Hotel and Georgia Medical and Dental Building. Vancouver Archives, 1976

The Fountain:

Over the next 48 years, the fountain endured visits from canoeists, waders and pranksters with soapsuds. It was the meeting place and rallying point for dozens of public demonstrations including Grey Cup rioters and anti-war protesters in the 1960s, 4/20 cannabis smoke-ins and the tent city of Occupy Vancouver in 2011.

The Centennial Fountain replaced Charles Marega’s from 1912. His fountain languished in storage until 1983 when the VAG moved into the building, and it was installed at the Hornby Street side.

The original Charles Marega fountain from 1912 sits at the Hornby Street side of the building. Eve Lazarus photo, 2020

May be there’s hope for a reappearance of Savery’s 1966 fountain.

Tags Alex von Svoboda, BC Centennial Fountain, Charles Marega, Devonshire Hotel, Georgia Medical and Dental Building, Mayor Bill Rathie, Occupy Vancouver, Robert Savery, Vancouver Art Gallery

Remembering Joe Fortes

by Eve Lazarus on February 4, 2017

Joe Fortes arrived in Vancouver in 1885 and quickly became one of the city’s most loved citizens. As our first official lifeguard and Beach Avenue resident, he saved dozens of lives.

This story is excerpted from: Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History.

Joe Fortes:

In 1904 Joe Fortes was living in a sweet little cottage at the foot of Gilford, right by where the Sylvia Hotel is today. When he heard that the city wanted to rid the water side of homes, he got permission from the mayor to put his home on skids and move it three blocks down the beach to the foot of Bidwell.

Two decades earlier Joseph Seraphim Fortes jumped ship in Burrard Inlet and decided to settle in Vancouver. He was a porter for a time, but after Vancouver burned to the ground in 1886, he started to teach kids to swim in English Bay—hundreds and hundreds of them. Twenty-nine is the official number of lives he saved, but the unofficial number is estimated to be closer to a hundred.

Joe’s Beach Avenue Cottage:

Joe lived in his little cottage by the water until his death on February 4, 1922. He was 57.

Instead of moving his former home across the street to Alexandra Park where it could become a repository for black history in Vancouver, for Joe Fortes, and for the houses that once dotted the water side of Beach Avenue, we burned it to the ground—the standard practice for demolition in the ‘20s.

Joe Fortes

“Our friend Joe’s” funeral was held at Holy Rosary Cathedral, and it was the most heavily attended in the history of Vancouver with thousands of people spilling outside the packed church.

In 1927, the people of Vancouver–many of them children–raised $5,000 (the equivalent of about $70,000 today) to build a memorial fountain in his honour. The fountain was sculpted by Charles Marega, one of the most interesting and prolific artists that you’ve probably never heard of, and inscribed with the words “little children loved him.”

Joe’s legend continues to carry on almost a century after his death.

Joe has a seafood restaurant named after him, and a library. In 1986, the Vancouver Historical Society named him “Citizen of the Century,” and in February 2013 he was honoured with a stamp on the 150^th anniversary of his birth.

Related: A superb National Film Board animation short about Joe produced in 2002

Tags Alexandra Park, Black History Month, Charles Marega, Holy Rosary Cathedral, Joe Fortes

The work of Charles Marega (1871-1939)

by Eve Lazarus on March 26, 2016

Charles Marega died on March 27, 1939.

And, while you may not know his name you will know his work. Those are his two lion statues at the south end of the Lions Gate Bridge. And while the lions may be his most well known work, Charles (or Carlos as he was christened) was a prolific sculptor in Vancouver.

I first heard of him when I was writing about Alvo von Alvensleben for At Home with History. Alvensleben owned what’s now part of Crofton Girl’s School and the 20 acres it sat on at West 41^st Avenue and Blenheim in Kerrisdale. He hired Marega to carve a magnificent riot of gargoyles, bats, rabbits and assorted weird faces in the white plaster of his dining room ceiling.

Crofton House ceiling courtesy Crofton House

Marega maidens At that point Marega wasn’t very well known, but he had just shocked Vancouver’s sensibilities by carving nine topless terra cotta maidens on L.D. Taylor’s building (now the Sun Tower), which likely appealed to the flamboyant Alvensleben.

Other commissions include the bronze bust of David Oppenheimer, Vancouver’s second mayor at the entrance to Stanley Park; the statue of Captain Vancouver in front of Vancouver City Hall; the 14 famous people on the Parliament Buildings in Victoria; and the drinking fountain that sits in Alexandra Park to honour Joe Fortes.

As Marega was creating sculptures for public places, his plaster work was also in demand for private mansions. His work can be found at Rio Vista on South West Marine Drive, Hycroft in Shaughnessy Heights, and Shannon at 57^th and Granville.

While Marega worked for the wealthy, in the 1930s he and his wife Bertha lived a humble existence at 1170 Barclay Street–a simple two-storey grey stucco apartment building in the West End with the improbable name of “The Florida.”

Charles Marega's home in the 1930s — The Florida on Barclay

To make ends meet, Marega taught at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (the forerunner to Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design). In fact, he had just finished teaching a class in 1939 when he had a heart attack and died. He was 68.

Tags 1170 Barclay Street, Alvo von Alvensleben, At Home with History, Carlos Marega, Charles Marega, Crofton Girl's School, Hycroft, Rio Vista, Shannon, Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts

The Sun Tower: On Top of the World

by Eve Lazarus on December 28, 2013

A couple of weeks ago my friend Tom Carter and I climbed to the top of the Sun Tower, one of my favourite buildings in Vancouver.

Sun Tower cupola

It’s also one of our most familiar landmarks, and at one time the tallest building in the British Empire when mayor, L.D. Taylor had it built over a century ago to house his newspaper—the Vancouver World.

100 West Pender Street

The building has a unique L shape with eight stories that runs along West Pender and Beatty Streets, topped by a nine-storey tower, capped by a Beaux-arts dome and cupola.

View from the Cupola:

We took the lift to the 17^th floor, climbed up a couple of flights of stairs into the dome, and then up a ladder to the cupola. Even with all the high-rises that have popped up around to overshadow it, the view from the cupola is breathtaking.

100 West Pender Street — The building’s elevator machinery is housed inside the dome. Eve Lazarus photo

One of the biggest misconceptions about the Sun Tower is its copper roof. Turns out it’s not copper at all, just concrete painted green.

Sculptures by Charles Marega:

Designed by William Tuff Whiteway in 1911, details include a marble staircase and nine topless maidens created by Charles Marega, who also sculpted the two lions at the Stanley Park end of the Lions Gate Bridge, the George Vancouver statue at City Hall and the Joe Fortes Memorial Fountain at English Bay. The “caryatids” support a cornice line halfway up the building, and so shocked the city’s elite they hindered leasing of the building.

LD Taylor still holds the record as the most elected mayor in the City of Vancouver. He won nine elections, lost seven, and served eight terms between 1910 and 1934. He looks like a nerdy little man in his trademark red tie and owlish glasses, but he was actually a flamboyant risk taker. In 1905, he bought the World, one of four daily newspapers in Vancouver, from Sara McLagan, the sister of noted architect Samuel Maclure, and rode the real estate boom so that The World carried the most display advertising of any daily in North America.

The newspaper was a huge success for LD, but his mega building couldn’t withstand the crash of 1913 and LD sold after only three years.

The Human Fly:

In 1918, the building attracted masses to watch Harry Gardiner “the human fly” scale the tower and climb through one of the top floor windows.

For a time the building was owned by Bekins, a Seattle-based moving company, and in 1937, became home to the Vancouver Sun for the next three decades. Laura Anderson tells me that Artists E.J. Hughes, Paul Goranson and Orville Fisher once had a studio in the tower, and Sun photographers set up a lair in the dome, but today, instead of the clattering of typewriters in the offices and the rumbling of presses, the basement holds a sleek new gym.

Meet Tom Carter

Tags 100 West Pender Street, 500 Beatty Street, Bekins, Charles Marega, Harry Gardiner, L.D. Taylor, Samuel Maclure, Sara McLagan, the Sun Tower, The Vancouver World, Tom Carter, William Tuff Whiteway

L.D. Taylor and the History of Taylor Manor

by Eve Lazarus on July 1, 2012

For more stories about L.D. Taylor’s Vancouver see: At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes

Mayor Gregor Robertson held a press conference Friday announcing the City’s receipt of a $30-million anonymous donation to reopen Taylor Manor. After an extensive renovation and upgrade, the house will provide housing for 56 people with mental health issues who now live on the streets of Vancouver.

The City built the Tudor Revival-style house in 1915 as a dormitory for destitute seniors and named it the Vancouver Old People’s Home. When it opened it had separate entrances for men and women. In 1946, it was renamed Taylor Manor after L.D. Taylor, Vancouver’s serial mayor. L.D. is still the most elected mayor in our history, winning nine elections, losing seven, and serving eight terms between 1910 and 1934.

While a photo of L.D. shows him as a slight looking, bland little man in owlish glasses, he was actually a bigamist and a flamboyant risk taker known for his trademark red tie and cigar. He published and edited the BC Mining Record, the Oil and Mining Record and the Critic, a paper on public issues. In 1905, he bought the Vancouver World newspaper from Sara McLagan, the sister of noted architect Samuel Maclure.

In keeping with his mega ambitions, in 1912 L.D. built a 17-storey Beaux-Arts building to house his newspaper. It was the highest building in the British Empire at the time, and caused a minor scandal for its nine near-naked women sculpted by Charles Marega.

The owners of the Vancouver Sun bought the building in 1937, and it’s been known as the Sun Tower ever since.

According to Daniel Francis’s highly readable biography, L.D. was an American-born accountant, who left his wife and young son in Chicago and headed for Vancouver in 1896 after he was accused of fraud.

Despite this shaky start, L.D. was a popular mayor. He supported the progressive idea of an eight-hour work day, universal suffrage for women and city planning. During his watch, L.D. oversaw the opening of the Vancouver International Airport and the Burrard Street bridge.

He had a relaxed approach to gambling, bootlegging and prostitution. In 1924, he told a Province reporter he didn’t believe that it was the mayor’s job to make Vancouver a “Sunday school town.”

Although Taylor lends his name to Taylor Manor, he never lived there. In 1917 he lived on the top floor of the Caroline Court at the corner of Thurlow and Nelson in the West End. By 1920, he moved to what was once the Granville Mansions at Robson and Granville, where he lived in rather meagre circumstances until his death in 1946 at age 88.

Tags 100 West Pender Street, 851 Boundary Road, Charles Marega, City of Vancouver, Daniel Francis, Gregor Robertson, L.D. Taylor, Samuel Maclure, Sara McLagan, Taylor Manor, the Sun Tower, The World

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