Eve Lazarus, Arlen Redekop photo, Vancouver Sun, 2020
Heritage Vancouver released their annual top 10 watch list last month (for 2021), and rather than look at endangered buildings, they have focused on space. I was interested to find Victory Square on the list—or rather not the square itself, but the buildings that surround it, some of which date back to the 1800s. The challenge, according to Heritage Vancouver, is to find the sweet spot between heritage retention and the need for low income housing.
The Arcade was a wooden building containing 13 shops (right of frame). It was replaced by the Dominion Building in 1909. Vancouver Archives, 1898
What a lot of people don’t know is that before Victory Square was Victory Square and home to the cenotaph, it was a happening part of the city known as Government Square, because it was the site of the first provincial courthouse.
Victory Square and the Flack Block, 1900. Vancouver Archives photo
The Original Vancouver Court House:
The impressive domed building was operational by 1890 and was the first major building outside of Gastown. It was quickly apparent that it was too small for our growing city, and within a few years it was given a large addition with a grand staircase and portico facing Hastings Street.
Vancouver’s original courthouse ca.1893. Vancouver Archives
Other buildings started to spring up around the Courthouse. In 1898, architect William Blackmore (Badminton Hotel, Strathcona Elementary) designed a building for Thomas Flack who had made his fortune in the Klondike and wanted to see an impressive building bear his name.
Military and Religion:
The original courthouse lasted just 20 years. It was demolished when the new law courts opened on West Georgia Street in 1912. The square, which is actually a triangle, is bounded by Hastings, Cambie, Pender and Hamilton Streets. It didn’t remain empty for long. By 1914, it was filled with a military tent, used to recruit soldiers to fight in the First World War. Then, in 1917, up went the Evangelistic Tabernacle.
The Evangelistic Tabernacle under construction, 1917. Vancouver Archives
The Cenotaph:
The church too was short lived. The Southams, owners of the Province Newspaper, which was housed across the street, donated funds to develop a park, which was then renamed Victory Square. By 1924, enough public money had been raised to build the cenotaph designed by G.L. Sharp. Sharp had the 30-foot cenotaph constructed from granite from Nelson Island.
The cenotaph is Vancouver’s memorial to citizens who lost their lives in the First World War. Vancouver Archives, 1925
The inscription facing Hastings Street reads: “Their name liveth for evermore. Facing Hamilton it says “Is it nothing to you.” And Facing Pender Street: “All ye that pass by.”
The Old Residence ca.1947. Courtesy Crofton House School
The Vancouver Heritage House tour is coming up Sunday June 2, and I haven’t been this excited since Casa Mia was featured in 2014. Don’t get me wrong, the VHF works hard all year to curate a great mix of architectural styles, neighbourhoods and house sizes, but unless you work at, or have a daughter at Crofton House School, you likely won’t get inside the Old Residence.
Alvo von Alvensleben, 1913. Courtesy CVA Port P1082
I was lucky to get a tour when I wrote At Home with History in 2007. What makes the house special for me is that it was owned by Alvo von Alvensleben, one of my favourite historical characters.
Alvensleben arrived in Vancouver in 1904 with $4 in his pocket, but he was hardly a rags-to-riches immigrant. He was the third son of a German count and had the connections, the education, and the charm to convince people like Emma Mumm, the champagne heiress, Bertha Krupp, heir to the Krupp fortune, General von Mackensen, and even the Kaiser himself to open up their bank accounts.
Crofton House ca. 1911
Alvensleben lived in Vancouver less than a decade, yet he was one of the biggest movers and shakers in the city. He brought millions of dollars of German investment into Vancouver and bought up large tracts of land and huge houses. Before going fabulously broke in 1913, he had a personal fortune of around $25 million. His business interests included mining, forestry, and fishing. He financed the Dominion Trust Building, and it was Alvensleben’s capital that built and developed the Wigwam Inn into a luxury resort.
Old Residence, 2019. Courtesy Crofton House School
In 1909, he paid $30,000 for the Kerrisdale house and 20 acres, made a number of additions, and he and his Canadian wife Edith moved in the following year. He bought a string of thoroughbred horses, and by 1912, it took 13 servants to run the household and cater the parties.
The parties stopped at the outbreak of war in 1914. Alvensleben, in Germany at the time, read the signs and stayed in the States. Edith packed up the three kids and everything she could fit into the car and fled to Seattle before the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property stripped all their assets.
You could stare at this ceiling for hours and not see everything. Alvensleben hired Charles Marega the sculptor, and there are gargoyles, bats, rabbits and assorted weird faces in the white plaster of his dining room ceiling. There are mice carved into the sides, owls, frogs and a horse shoe. I think Marega may have even carved his own face into one of the columns. Courtesy Crofton House School
The Kerrisdale house stood empty until 1919 when it sold to Robert J. Cromie, publisher of the Vancouver Sun. The original 20 acres had been reduced to about 13 after the rest had been sold to pay off Alvensleben’s creditors. In 1942, Bernadette Cromie, now a widow, sold the house and property to the Crofton House School for $15,000.
Dining in 1967. Courtesy Crofton House School
Alvensleben died in Seattle. And over half-a-century later, no one really knows if he was a savvy businessman, a shady salesman, or a German James Bond.
Last week, Michael Kluckner and I were over at Tom Carter’s studio looking out his seventh storey window onto the EasyPark—a cavernous concrete lot that fronts West Pender and takes up the entire city block from Cambie to Beatty Streets.
In 2013, Michael had the dubious honour (my words) of presenting the parking lot with a heritage plaque on behalf of Places That Matter.
He wasn’t recognizing the parking lot of course, but the buildings that were once Vancouver’s first city hospital and included a men’s surgical ward, a maternity ward, a tuberculosis ward, and the city morgue which faced Beatty Street.
Pender and Beatty Street in 1939. Note the Sun Tower left of frame and former Hospital buildings behind. Courtesy Tom Carter
If we’d been looking out Tom’s window back in 1912, we would have had a great view of the courthouse in what’s now Victory Square, the shiny new Dominion Building, and the former city hospital, built in 1888, which according to Michael’s Vancouver: The Way it Was consisted of a compound of brick buildings with wooden balconies set back from the street, flower gardens and a picket fence.
Aerial view of Larwill Park construction, the Sun Tower and the Vancouver hospital buildings. Note the Central School bottom right of frame demolished in 1946. Courtesy Tom Carter
By the turn of the century, the 50-bed hospital was too small for Vancouver’s growing population and a new hospital was built in Fairview in 1906 which became the Vancouver General Hospital as we know it now.
The first city hospital was repurposed into the headquarters for McGill University College (BC). And that’s another interesting story.
A former hospital building in 1949, shortly before it was turned into a parking lot. Courtesy CVA 447.61
In 1899, Vancouver High School joined forces with McGill to offer first year arts courses. Six years later the school moved to fancy new digs at Oak and 12th Avenue (later renamed King Edward High School), and McGill moved into the former hospital buildings. McGill stayed in the old hospital until 1911 and faded from the landscape after UBC opened in 1915.
The tuberculosis ward, courtesy Tom Carter
JFCB Vance from Blood, Sweat, and Fearhad a lab in there from around 1912 when the police station on East Cordova was demolished until the new station opened in 1914. According to City Directories, a former hospital building became the “old people’s home” until 1915 when Social Services (the City Relief and Employment Department) moved in and stayed until the late ’40s.
And just like that it’s a parking lot. 1951 photo courtesy Tom Carter
The city hospital buildings were gone by 1950 and now all that’s left is a plaque affixed to a parking lot.
Top photo: The first Vancouver Hospital in 1902. Courtesy CVA Bu P369
With thanks to Tom Carter for finding all these great photos and to Places That Matter for all the work that they do.
I finally got to motor up Indian Arm and see the Wigwam Inn–well from the outside. You can’t get inside unless you’re a member of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.
The Wigwam Inn ca.1913. Photo courtesy Vancouver Archives LGN 1028
It seems crazy to me that it’s still fairly inaccessible (unless you own a boat), yet in 1910 there were four different sternwheelers taking guests up and down the Arm from Vancouver—the year the Wigwam Inn opened.
Alvo von Alvensleben, ca.1913. CVA PORT P1082
Alvo von Alvensleben:
I first “discovered” the Inn about 10 years ago. I was doing some research on Alvo von Alvensleben, an early Vancouver businessman and son of a German count who came to Vancouver in 1904, and not only has a name you couldn’t make up, he’s one of the most fascinating characters in BC’s history. For some reason, he has never rated a biography, so I’ve dedicated a chapter to him in my book At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes.
Benny Dickens, an advertising manager for the Daily Province saw potential in creating a resort and bought up a few hundred acres at Indian Arm in the early 1900s. He quickly ran out of money and turned to Alvensleben.
Alvensleben financed the construction of the Dominion Building. His private residence is now part of the Crofton House girl’s school in Kerrisdale, he owned a hunting lodge on Somerset in North Vancouver and houses in Pitt Meadows, Surrey and Washington State that are still known as “Alien Acres” and “Spy House.” It was Alvensleben who made the Inn a reality, turning it into a German Luftkurot (fresh-air resort). At the same time, Alvensleben was also selling lots for $200 to $300, and promising a private boat service to Vancouver that “guaranteed to get business people to the office by 9:00 a.m.”
Wigwam Inn 1937 CVA LEG 1319-017
Inn changes hands:
When the war hit, Alvensleben headed to Seattle. The inn which had attracted guests like American millionaires John D. Rockefeller and John Jacob Astor, fell upon tough times after the government seized it in 1914. Over the years, the Inn changed hands many times, and all but disappeared from public view until the early 1960s when William “Fats” Robertson, 34 and his partner Rocky Myers, 30 took control.
In July 1962, Marine Constable Gale Gardener was one of a a couple of boatloads of RCMP officers from the liquor, gambling and prostitution squads, sent up to bust the old resort. They arrested 15 people and uncovered an illegal gambling operation, plates for printing counterfeit money, stolen art and 300 cases of beer. Robertson, and his partner were found guilty of trying to bribe an RCMP officer and received six years in prison. More owners followed until the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club bought the Inn in 1985. Now it’s strictly members only, and there’s no more room at the inn.
One of the things I loved most about being a contributor to Vancouver Confidential was working with reporters, bloggers, artists, tour guides, actors, musicians and academics that cut across both decades and demographics. The experience made me realize what a truly diverse group we have working in the local history and heritage space.
So just for fun, I’ve asked several of my heritage heroes to tell me their favourite residential or commercial building, and to tell me the one building that should never have left our landscape.
John Atkin is a civic historian, heritage consultant, author and walking tour guide. He co-chairs the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC, sits on the board of the Friends of the Archives and is a Trustee of the Dr Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden. In his spare time John likes to bind books and draw.
Favourite Vancouver building:
Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church on Campbell Avenue in Strathcona is a single-handed effort from the Russian Orthodox missionary priest, architect and carpenter, the Reverend Archpriest Alexander Kiziun. He died before completion, but was responsible for its design. He salvaged materials from a variety of sources which makes the church unique in its construction and character.
Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church
The one building that should never had been destroyed:
The Georgia Medical Dental building should never have been demolished. Silly reasons put forward by the council of the day, a developer with an outsized ego and a building which would have been a dramatic blend of old and new if it had survived for a few more years like the now celebrated Hotel Georgia.
Aaron Chapman is a writer, historian and musician with a special interest in Vancouver’s entertainment history and the author of Liquor, Lust, and the Law, Live at The Commodore, and a contributor to Vancouver Confidential. You can catch Aaron live at the Vancouver Archives on March 22
Favourite Vancouver building:
The Vancouver Planetarium. The steel crab sculpture, the UFO like dome building, and the ramp that rises up to the doorway makes you feel like just entering the building is an event. The design is modern, but it’s the location for the Vancouver Museum, and therefore full of the past that makes an interesting contradiction. And there’s something of that late 60s “space-age” era architecture that not only reminds me of that design style that was so popular when I was a kid, but the whole place also likely reminds me of the elementary school field trips fondly spent there. Runner ups? The Penthouse and The Commodore Ballroom, of course!
The one building that should never had been destroyed:
The Cave. I was too young to ever go in myself before it was demolished, so perhaps I’m considering it through an odd lens of nostalgia. How wonderful would it be today to see a show that had such history to it, and knowing that you were standing in the place where so many great jazz musicians, comedians, and stars came through, especially in a place designed to look like a cave with stalactites and stalagmites everywhere as the decor. Hipsters today would have flocked to a place with such kitsch.
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre (Vancouver Planetarium)
Jeremy Hood is the sole administrator for the FB page Vancouver: Then. “It has been a labour of love for the past two and half years and I am still blown away by some of the comments of real life Vancouver stories, some first hand, some passed down, that follow in the comments section of the photos I post,” says Jeremy. “When not working at my day job I am a photographer, a local history buff and cat lover.”
Favourite Vancouver building:
The Dominion Building wins out for me mainly for its uniqueness and how little it has changed in over 100 years. There is no building quite like it in Vancouver and it is situated in a location that enhances the magnificent stature of the building, including the mansard roof and decorated cornice. Even with a city that has grown around it, it still manages to stand out.
The “now” photo by Jeremy Hood, the “then” photo of the Dominion Building Vancouver Archives, 1944 CVA 1184-615.
The one building that should never had been destroyed:
Two buildings that should not have been torn down are the Birks Building and the second Hotel Vancouver. The Birks Building, while majestic, handsome and a cruel loss to the city, didn’t have quite the mind-boggling ‘wow factor’ that the second Hotel Vancouver had. The sheer size of this hotel building and the fantastic detailing that went into it is almost impossible to imagine today, with vintage photographs of it likely just scratching the surface at what as treasure this landmark building once was. One can only wonder ‘what if’ and how that building would look today if it was saved.
Will Woods is the Founder and Chief Storyteller at Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours and a contributor to Vancouver Confidential.
Photo by Kiri Marr
Favourite Vancouver building:
Any one of the early twentieth century buildings on Pender Street in Chinatown that have retained they recessed balconies and ornamental features. It’s really something to walk down that street and see buildings that wouldn’t be out of place in Guangdong, circa 1900-1920. And the recessed balconies are perfect for our climate here, but for some reason never caught on!
Second Hotel Vancouver on Georgia Street
The one building that should never had been destroyed:
The second Hotel Vancouver. The images that survive today show what an incredible and ornate building that was. A real tragedy it is gone, especially when the current occupant of that site is one of the city’s most bland office buildings. Fast-forward ten years and I expect I will be saying the Canada Post building on West Georgia. I’d love to see that retained and turned into an art gallery or museum – akin to the Tate in London. I think the merits of 1950s architecture will be increasingly apparent, the faster it slips into the rear-view mirror and the more of the buildings are lost. That particular building has a hint of the futuristic about it (helicopter pad on the roof for example), but also homage to tradition, with the large emblem on the front. It’s also “Herzogian” in its era, the photographer who seems to capture the ‘essence’ of Vancouver as well as anyone over the years. Almost as if the ’50s were ‘peak Vancouver’ in terms of visual richness.
Foncie was a street photographer who opened Foncie’s Fotos in 1946 and shot millions of photos of people as they strolled Vancouver’s streets. Vancouver-born Selwyn Pullan, served in the Canadian Navy during the war, worked as a news photographer for the Halifax Chronicle, returned to Vancouver in 1950 and reinvented architectural photography. Fred Herzog immigrated from Germany in 1953 and some of my favourite photos are ones he shot of vacant lots, backyards in Strathcona and ordinary people on ordinary streets.
They didn’t know it at the time, but all three photographers were creating a historical record of Vancouver and revealing intimate details of our changing city.
Alcazar Hotel, Jan de Haas photo, ca.1955. The Alcazar opened in 1913 at 337 Dunsmuir and demolished in 1982 and replaced with the BC Hydro building
Last week, Wiebe de Haas sent me some photos that his father Jan de Haas shot during that period. I liked how he’d captured different parts of Vancouver and the neon signs of the day and I wanted to know more about him.
Jan de Haas brought his wife and three children to Canada from the Netherlands in 1952.
“Colour photography was on the rise and he thought coming to North America would give him the opportunity to advance in his field as a photographer,” says Wiebe.
Shores Jewelers opened in 1948 in the Dominion Building, 207 W. Hastings. Jan de Haas photo ca.1955
Jan was hired at Photo Arts on Hornby Street, and within a few years had opened a store front business with his wife Ilse on 10th Avenue in West Point Grey. The de Haas’s built up a solid business shooting passport photos, portraits, weddings, grad photos at UBC and some commercial photography.
Jan de Haas
Jan was a member of the Professional Photographers of Canada, and before he died in 1967, he created a trophy to be awarded to the photographer who shot that year’s most creative image. The trophy was designed by his friend George Norris, a prolific sculptor best known for the giant metal crab that sits in the fountain outside the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vanier Park.
The trophy is a work of art.
“My father wanted to give something to the organization of his peers, whom he respected and relied on,” says Wiebe. “He liked the idea that the trophy was symbolic of birth, the creation of life. It is as much a remembrance of George Norris as it is of my father.”
A globe with five lens windows is mounted on a chrome stem and dome base and held in place by small bolts. The globe represents the womb, and inside is a chrome fetus. “Except for the pin-hole camera, all cameras use a lens to focus the light onto a focal plane,” says Wiebe. “The bolts seem to me to symbolize camera construction. The fetus is a symbol of new creation, of new expression and ideas.”
In 2011 Wiebe had the honour of presenting his father’s trophy to Langara photography student Christoph Prevost. It was the first time a student had won in the history of the memorial trophy.
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.
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 MacGilvray, 1918
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 4th 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
When North Vancouver’s Dene Rossouw takes a photograph he’s not looking to capture the physical reality of the scene he wants to evoke a mood, an emotional experience or just draw our attention to a detail that we might not otherwise have noticed.
His photo of the Dominion Building on West Hastings is shot from an unusual angle–looking up Cambie Street that manages to capture the character and the energy of the building. It’s a fascinating study because all the buildings are heritage and if not for the cars and the signs, could have come from any time over the last 100 years.
“I’m looking to find some sort of expression in the photograph that is not always the reality that we see with the eye,” he says. “I want to bring out something that we’ve never noticed, but it’s always been there right in front of us–like salt and pepper on the table.”
The Japanese Garden at Mayne Island.
Dene says he can shoot up to 300 photographs of a scene—whether that’s a building or a garden or an object like a bike or a truck—before choosing the one that works.
He chose an old truck in Tofino that told a story, an original Fort Langley workshop, and the colours punch right out of his photo of the Japanese garden on Mayne Island.
The brightening effect he produces in the photos is called High Dynamic Range Imaging, (HDR), a process that brings out extreme ranges or definitions of colour.
Gastown in December
The photo taken at the corner of Cambie and Water Street in Gastown was shot on a cold frosty night in late December. Dene noticed that the street signs were throwing some colour onto the buildings and he’s highlighted that colour in the photograph.
A general store at the Burnaby Village Museum caught his attention because of its authenticity. “It was teeming with character,” he says. “Unlike some of these places when they try to preserve heritage and it looks overly manufactured.”
Burnaby Village Museum, general store
Dene brings an eclectic background to his photography. He has a degree in theology from the University of South Africa, he’s a certified executive coach through Royal Roads University, and he studied workplace conflict at the Justice Institute of B.C. Mostly though, he’s a motivational teacher and experimental photographer. Check out more photos on his website.
Favourite Vancouver building:
Favourite Vancouver building:
His photo of the 
