I went to the District of North Vancouver offices to pick up some money owed and was promptly redirected to the City of North Vancouver offices five minutes down the road. It made me wonder yet again why we are running two completely separate bureaucracies for a relatively small population. It also made me think about Warnett Kennedy’s plan to turn North Vancouver into a second downtown Vancouver.
North Vancouver City Hall
A couple of months back I wrote about Kennedy’s planned third crossing for Burrard Inlet which was debated and promptly tossed out back in the early 1970s. In the same book Kennedy, who is described as an architect, town planner and City of Vancouver Alderman, outlines his ambitious plans for a crossing that would include rapid transit to the North Shore. He also argues for a Twin City.
“The Twin City Concept combined with a Third Crossing would be enormously useful,” he writes. “Hopefully a time will come when we talk of “Vancouver One” and “Vancouver two.”
His idea was to take development pressure off the Fraser Valley, and presumably move it onto the North Shore.
From a 1974 book called Vancouver Tomorrow: A search for Greatness
In this vision of two downtown Vancouvers—one which looks like it would be at the bottom of Pemberton in North Vancouver—Kennedy wrote that Burrard Inlet would be seen as “a lake in the centre of this future regional city.”
“I have often been asked to explain the reasons for my proposal first published in 1972 for a twin downtown Vancouver. Although it appears somewhat startling, the logic of the idea is essentially simple,” he says. “If a rapid transit link were to exist today it would take only four minutes running time to travel from Vancouver’s Central Business District to a Central Business District on the North Shore.
West Vancouver Municipal Hall
“It would be as though Vancouver had reached out and pulled the North Shore almost alongside its downtown. The water of the harbour, in imagination and for all practical purposes, is narrowed to a river’s width.”
I’ve lived in North Vancouver for a couple of decades now and I found his argument for the twin city less than compelling.
The chapter ends on the optimistic note that all that was needed to get this plan off the paper was that North Vancouver City, and the District of North Vancouver and West Vancouver would amalgamate with their “mother city” Vancouver.
Fred Thornton Hollingsworth was born in England in 1917. He pioneered West Coast Architecture on the North Shore and died in 2015 at the age of 98.
While Arthur Erickson, Ned Pratt and Ron Thom have imprinted their West Coast style of architecture all over Vancouver, Fred Thornton Hollingsworth is the architect most responsible for the look of post war North Vancouver. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollingsworth met the legend in 1951 and turned down a job offer to work with him, opting instead to develop his own style.
Fred Hollingsworth in the Trethewey Residence he designed in 1961. Photo courtesy of Selwyn Pullan.
West Coast Architecture:
Lee Atwell grew up in a Hollingsworth house.
Her parents bought the “Watt’s Residence” from the original owners in 1965. It was built for $15,000 in 1951.
3635 Sunnycrest Drive, North Vancouver
Lee’s dad died this year, and she and her sister Bev, who both live out of province, put the house on the market – only the third time in the sixty years since it was built.
“It was my Dad’s wish to live in the house until the time he passed at the age of 87—he loved the house so much,” Lee said. “I feel not only was it my parents who influenced our aesthetic tastes and deep connection to the natural world, but also the house itself. The house helped to define who we are today.”
Lee and Bev’s fear was that new owners would want to raze the place and put up something new. So they were immensely relieved when they found buyers who also love the house. Instead of tearing it down, they’ve hired Fred’s son Russell Hollingsworth, to design an addition in keeping with his father’s philosophy.
The Neoteric House:
I’ve written about Hollingsworth before, but Lee’s comments made me want to revisit some of his architecture, because when it comes to post-war architecture, Fred Hollingsworth is a rock star. He invented the Neoteric style where Lee, Bev and their older brother grew up—affordable family housing with a small footprint, open plan and simple post and beam construction. As early as 1946, Hollingsworth was including radiant floor heating, clerestory windows and skylights to let in lots of light and old growth wood paneling.
As Lee will tell you, a Hollingsworth house is part design, part art and part architecture.
2576 Edgemont Boulevard, North Vancouver
Reconnecting with Nature:
The Moon Residence was built for $11,000 in 1950. It came onto the market for $1.38 million this summer. Like Lee’s house, it is set in a private park-like setting and looks like part of nature rather than something imposed upon it. It’s the type of house that the environmentally friendly should aspire to, and fortunately there are still many Hollingsworth houses in existence–I counted 22 in the District of North Vancouver’s inventory of modern architecture.
“I’ve always said a home is an escape from the world; a place to which you escape to reconnect with nature,” Hollingsworth told writer and urban designer Bob Ransford.
“My clients were all individuals. Many people had different interests. I tried to get into their lives. I tried to find out how they used their space.”
In fact, Hollingsworth, who will turn 95 in January, still lives in the house he designed for his family in 1946 at 1205 Ridgewood Drive in Edgemont Village.
While his name stands for West Coast Modernism and small residential homes, Hollingsworth’s architectural range is astounding. He designed the building that houses UBC’s Faculty of Law in 1971, and in 1993, he designed Nat Bosa’s West Vancouver waterfront mansion at 130 South Oxley Street. In 2005, Vancouver Magazine ranked it as the second most expensive property in BC; assessed at $24 million, with a market value of more than $30 million.
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.
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 registerwould 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….
Wondering what happened to the neon “DRUGS” sign that once sat on top of the Pharmasave building in Edgemont Village?The building is long gone. Pharmasave moved across the street and didn’t want to move the sign with them. The new building, now an HSBC bank, didn’t want a sign that has no bearing on its business.
Robert Watt, a historian, archivist and former Chief Herald of Canada, wants the sign returned to the Village. As the curator of history at the Vancouver Museum, he was instrumental in starting a neon collection in the late 1970s and has lived in Edgemont since 1990.
The sign, he says is “iconic” in Edgemont Village, connects residents to the streetscape and should be an integral part of the area’s heritage. The RX stands for Rexall, the original pharmacy at that location, while the mortar and pestle at the top of the sign represents the tool that pharmacists once used to crush, grind and mix substances.
Helen’s turned into Heights
Many of Metro Vancouver’s neon signs wound up on the scrap heap, but the 1957 girl on the swing was recently restored and relocated. The letters changed from “Helen’s” to “Heights” as a way to continue its significance to the Burnaby Heights district.
While no one wants to rob the sign of its heritage importance, maybe we need to make some compromises. Let’s face it, not a lot of businesses want the word “drugs” above their logo, there isn’t a lot of district-owned land available in the area, and if the sign is turned on, then it needs to be away from a residential neighbourhood.
The sign now belongs to the District of North Vancouver and is presently crated up in the operations centre.
Most municipalities have a heritage inventory that includes houses built before 1940. Makes sense doesn’t it? When you think heritage you think old. But actually heritage can be 20 years old, and that can surprise a new home owner wanting to renovate or demolish who is suddenly hauled in front of a heritage commission.
When the City of Vancouver introduced the Heritage Register in 1986, the foremost concern was saving buildings deemed architecturally important. The register identified prominent Shaughnessy houses such as Glen Brae and Hycroft, Roedde House in the West End, as well as various churches, schools, and public buildings. Recently, the city added 22 modern buildings to the register. Five of these are protected through designation: the former BC Hydro building, the former Vancouver Public Library, the Gardner House in Southlands, the Dodek House in Oakridge and the Evergreen Building.
In 1997, the District of North Vancouver published a modern inventory for houses built between 1930 and 1965. Many are modest looking post and beams designed by local legends Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Fred T. Hollingsworth and Ned Pratt.
BC Binning House
The Binning Residence at 2968 Mathers Crescent, in West Vancouver and built by Ned Pratt, is maintained by The Land Conservancy and it’s well worth checking out on one of the public tours.
Built in 1941 for $5,000, the house is credited with launching the West Coast modernism movement. Unlike the massive multi-million dollar mansions that surround it, Binning responded to the social and economic condition of the time by using local materials and efficient construction materials to create an affordable house that harmonizes art and architecture, form and function.
A prominent artist who studied under Frederick Varley and Henry Moore, Binning founded the University of B.C.’s department of fine arts. His interest in architecture led him to design large mosaic murals for public buildings such as the B.C. Electric Substation and the series of murals which he painted directly onto the walls of his house.
