Devonshire Hotel

The Devonshire (1924-1981)

by Eve Lazarus on April 3, 2021

The Devonshire Hotel on West Georgia was demolished July 5, 1981 to make way for the head office tower of the Bank of BC.

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

The Georgia Medical-Dental Building, Devonshire Hotel and Hotel Georgia, ca.1930. CVA 65-2

Devonshire Apartment Hotel:

The Devonshire originally opened as an apartment building, but within a few years was operating as the Devonshire Hotel. The building sat between the Georgia Hotel and the Georgia Medical-Dental Building and closed 40 years ago this month to make way for the head office tower of the Bank of BC.

Architectural Rending ca. 1920s, courtesy Bob Kerr, McCarter Nairne.

The Devonshire, which was designed by McCarter Nairne (the architects later designed the GM-DB next door and the Marine building) replaced Georgia House, which was actually two houses joined together by a long pergola-like verandah and known for its dances and parties. According to one newspaper story, some of the Devonshire suites had grand pianos, likely because Walter Fred Evans, the owner was a piano distributor and involved with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Architectural rendering of floor plan, ca.1920s. Courtesy Bob Kerr, McCarter Nairne

Louis Armstrong:

I never saw the Devonshire, but I love one of its stories.

According to newspaper reports, after being kicked out of the racist Hotel Vancouver in 1951, Louis Armstrong and his All Stars walked across the street and were immediately given rooms in the Devonshire.

Louis Armstrong at the Devonshire, 1951. Photo Province photographer John McGinnis and rediscovered by the Sun’s John Mackie in 2017

A photo of a travel-weary Armstrong sitting on his suitcase in the Devonshire’s lobby appears on the cover of his album in 1951.

Supposedly, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and the Mills Brothers wouldn’t stay anywhere else.

Red Jackets and Corned Beef Sandwiches:

Former Globe and Mail reporter and author Rod Mickleburgh was there when the Devonshire was demolished. “I thought the loss of the Dev was awful. The Dev was the poor cousin of the Hotel Georgia, an old-fashioned pile-of-bricks hotel in a great location right downtown,” he told me. “I loved the corned beef sandwiches and glass of beer I’d get in their beer parlour, served, of course, by waiters in red jackets on small, round, terry cloth—covered tables. A glass of beer was twenty cents—you gave the unionized waiter a quarter.”

I forgot to ask Rod if he remembered seeing William “Fats” Robertson there having a beer. Fats, along with a bevy of judges, lawyers, doctors and stockbrokers was a regular until 1978 when he was caught heading up a major drug smuggling ring and sentenced to 20 years.

Angus McIntyre took this photo a few days after the Devonshire was demolished in 1981. Note the parkade on the west side of Hornby Street.

Dal Richards, Manager:

Local celebrity Dal Richards was the resident manager from 1979 to its closure two years later. Eleni Skalbania was an investor in the late 1970s. She followed that with a partnership in the Hotel Georgia, and in 1984, opened her own boutique hotel, The Wedgewood on Hornby Street.

Only the Georgia Hotel remains. Eve Lazarus photo, 2020

Our missing heritage buildings

Sources:

Province, November 13, 1932, April 30, 1981
Vancouver Sun, April 29, 1981, January 14, 2017
Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Tags Dal Richards, Devonshire Hotel, Eleni Skalbania, Georgia House, Georgia Medical-Dental Building, Hotel Georgia, Louis Armstrong, Walter Fred Evans, William (Fats Robertson

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

Our Missing Heritage: The Ritz Hotel

by Eve Lazarus on November 24, 2018

Selwyn Pullan shot these photos of the Ritz Hotel in 1956, shortly after it had been renovated into this awesome mid-century modern look.

But while it had a fancy name, the Ritz Hotel at 1040 West Georgia was originally designed as a YMCA in 1912 by Henry Sandham Griffith. Griffith had offices in Vancouver and Victoria and was riding the real estate boom of the time. He made enough money to build himself a castle-like manor he named Fort Garry on Cook Street in Victoria, that later belonged to David Spencer and became known as Spencer’s Castle. It’s now part of a condo development.

St. Julien Apartments, 1924. Designed as a 7-storey reinforced concrete building at a cost of $375,000. Photo: CVA 99-1411

Unfortunately for the YMCA, the economy tanked in 1913, the First World War broke out the following year and the Y couldn’t raise the money to finish the building. It sold, and was completed as the St. Julien Apartments in 1924. Radio Station CJOR launched in 1926, and shared the building for the next three years.

St. Julien Apartments, 1929. Designed by H.S. Griffith in 1912. The only two Vancouver buildings that still exist of his work are the Board of Trade, 402 West Pender and the West End’s Barrymore Apartments on Barclay. Photo: VPL 4759

The St. Julien Apartments didn’t last long. By 1929, it had transformed into the Ritz Apartment Hotel, offering hotel rooms and fully serviced apartments. One of its long-term residents was Mabel Ellen (Springer) Boultbee, a divorcee who is said to be the first white child born on Burrard Inlet. She was born in Moodyville in 1875 and died in her room at the hotel 77 years later. She shared the apartment with her sister Eva.

Mabel and Eva ran a school together in the 1890s, and Mabel wrote for the Vancouver Sun’s women’s pages for 30 years. She was also a member of the swanky women-only Georgian Club which occupied the top floor of the Ritz Hotel from 1947 until the building’s untimely demise in 1982.

One of a series of photos taken from the roof of the Ritz Hotel in 1948. Photo: VPL 80734.

The Devonshire Hotel—our other much loved and storied building just two blocks away on West Georgia, came down in 1981, replaced by the HSBC building.

The Georgia-Medical Dental Building is under construction in this 1929 Leonard Frank photo. The Devonshire is in the middle. Both buildings are long gone.

The Ritz Hotel was replaced by the 22-storey hideous gold Grosvenor building.

With thanks to:

the Vancouver Public Library and BC City Directories
Chuck Davis’s Vancouverhistory.ca
Changing Vancouver blog
Building the West: Early Architects of British Columbia by Don Luxton
Find a Grave

To find out more about fabulous buildings that no longer exist – go to: Our Missing Heritage

Tags Barrymore Apartments, CJOR, Devonshire Hotel, Fort Garry, Henry Sandham Griffith, Mabel Ellen Boultbee, Ritz Apartment Hotel, Ritz Hotel, Selwyn Pullan, Spencer's Castle, St. Julien Apartments, the Georgian Club, Vancouver Board of Trade, YMCA

The Georgia Medical-Dental Building

by Eve Lazarus on May 27, 2017

On May 28, 1989, we blew up the Georgia Medical-Dental Centre, a building on West Georgia designed by McCarter & Nairne, the same architects behind the Marine and the Devonshire Apartments.* What were we thinking?

The Devonshire was first, designed as an apartment building in 1924. Next came the 15-storey art deco medical building. The Marine Building was completed in 1930—the only one left standing.

Leonard Frank Photo, 1929 — Leonard Frank photo in 1929 showing the Georgia Medical-Dental Building under construction, next to the Devonshire and the Georgia Hotel.

What were we thinking?

As this more recent photo shows, the HSBC Building now sits where the elegant Devonshire Hotel used to be. The GMDB was blown up or perhaps blown down is more accurate—to make way for the twenty-three-storey Cathedral Place.

Cathedral Place replaced the Georgia Medical Dental Building

Paul Merrick, designed Cathedral Place, renovated the Marine Building, the Orpheum Theatre, and converted the old BC Hydro Building to the Electra. 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 11^th storey parapets. Known as the Rhea Sisters, the terra-cotta statues weighed several tonnes each. Later restored, the nurses are 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 keep the original one! The Georgia Medical-Dental Building was only sixty after all—hardly old enough for its unseemly demise, but old enough to represent a significant part of our history.

Cathedral Place designed by Paul Merrick — Fibre glass nurse at Cathedral Place

The Devonshire:

I never saw the Devonshire, but I love one of its stories. 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 stayed at 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.

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Tags Cathedral Place, Devonshire Hotel, Georgia Medical-Dental Building, Marine Building, McCarter Nairne, Paul Merrick, Rhea Sisters

Our Missing Hotel Heritage: What were we thinking?

by Eve Lazarus on August 8, 2015

The much lamented—and never should have come down–second Hotel Vancouver should have the number one spot on any much missed heritage building list, but I’d argue that the Devonshire should be a close second. When it comes to hotels, we’ve pulled down a lot of them. Here’s my Top 7 list of downtown hotels missing from our landscape.

Second Hotel Vancouver

1. The Second Hotel Vancouver (1916-1949)

Built in 1916 and pulled down just 33 years later to make way for a parking lot, this was one of the most elegant and ornate buildings we ever destroyed. Its eventual replacement (the former Sears building, Pacific Centre), is to put it mildly, disappointing.

2. The Devonshire (1923-1981)

The Devonshire was originally designed as an apartment building and sat between the Hotel Georgia and the Georgia Medical Dental Building. There’s a great story from 1951 that goes when Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were kicked out of the Hotel Vancouver they walked across the street and were given rooms in the Devonshire. Supposedly Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and the Mills Brothers wouldn’t stay anywhere else.

3. The Glencoe Lodge (1906-1932)

The Glencoe Lodge (also known as the Hotel Belfred) was built or “assembled” as a residential hotel by sugar baron B.T. Rogers, and as Heather Gordon notes was managed by Jean Mollison, who was known as the “grand Chatelaine.” It sat at the corner of West Georgia and Burrard, and some well known guests included Lord Strathcona, W.H. Malkin, a former mayor and wealthy grocer, and Alvo von Alvensleben.

4. Manor House/Badminton Hotel 1889-1936

As noted at Past Tense, the Manor House was one of the earliest buildings constructed west of Granville Street. Designed by William Blackmore, it sat at the southwest corner of Dunsmuir (603 Howe Street). For details see Glen Mofford’s page.

5. Hotel Elysium (1911-1970s)

As Michael Kluckner notes in Vancouver Remembered, when it opened on April Fool’s Day, 1911, the Elysium was a good building built in the wrong part of town. Located at 1140 West Pender, it was converted into suites by C.B.K. Van Norman in 1943 and renamed Park Plaza.

Alcazar Hotel, ca.1955 Jan de Haas photo, courtesy Wiebe de Haas

6. Alcazar Hotel (1912-1982)

The Alcazar Hotel hung in for 70 years at 337 Dunsmuir, before being taken out in the early 1980s and eventually became the BC Hydro building. According to Changing Vancouver, the Alcazar featured 1940s murals by Jack Shadbolt in the dining room.

7. York Hotel (1911-1968)

The York Hotel sat at 790 Howe Street at the corner of Robson. According to Changing Vancouver it was built as an annex for the Hotel Vancouver, and its purpose was to maintain a CPR hotel presence while the second Hotel Vancouver was built. And, yes it was replaced by the Pacific Centre Mall eyesore, which took out so many great heritage buildings.

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Our Missing Heritage – What should we have kept?

by Eve Lazarus on December 20, 2014

Every now and then I run a story under a series I call “Our Missing Heritage – What were we thinking?” It came out of my frustration from researching my books on home histories. Often I’d hear or read about a great story that happened in a house, or see a picture of an amazing building only to find out that it had turned into a parking lot, a boxy condo tower or a monster house.

Last week I looked at missing theatres that included the Strand, the Empress, the Rex, the Pantages and the Vancouver Opera House. Other posts have focussed on the Georgia Medical-Dental Building, the Devonshire Hotel, the Birks Building and the second Hotel Vancouver. Occasionally I take a look at a residential building such as Legg House in the West End, and lesser known ones such as the Fred Hollingsworth West Coast Modern house now missing from North Vancouver’s Edgemont Village.

The Legg residence was built in 1899 — 1245 Harwood Street

Sadly, I have a growing list of buildings to add to future posts that have now been bulldozed out of existence. My question to you this week is – what’s your favourite building that we should have kept? It can be anywhere in B.C., commercial or residential, and it doesn’t have to be architecturally jaw dropping or eccentric. It may be a simple house that belonged to someone interesting or it may just have had a great story to tell. In other words, I’m looking for buildings that would have made our heritage a little bit richer if we’d let them stay around.

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

John Hendry’s house, 725 Queens Avenue, New Westminster. Photo courtesy New Westminster Museum and Archives, ca.1890.

Tags 1245 Harwood, Birks Building, Devonshire Hotel, Fred Hollingsworth, Georgia Medical-Dental Building, Legg House, Second Hotel Vancouver, the Empress, the Pantages, the Rex, The Strand, the Vancouver Opera House

Our Missing Heritage — What were we thinking? (Part 1)

by Eve Lazarus on September 8, 2013

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 11^th 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.

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

Tags BC Hydro building, Cathedral Place, Devonshire Hotel, Electra, General Post Office, Georgia Hotel, Hotel Vancouver, HSBC Building, Livestock Building, Louis Armstrong, Marine B, Marine Building, McCarter Nairne, Patricia Hotel, Paul Merrick, Pennsylvania Hotel, Rhea Sisters, the Georgia Medical-Dental Building, Walter Fred Evans

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