Electra

BC Binning’s Missing Murals

by Eve Lazarus on February 5, 2022

BC Binning wasn’t just an important artist; as a teacher, he influenced architects such as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth. Where are his missing murals?

From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

BC Binning’s mural still decorates the old BC Hydro Building, which was converted into condos in the early 1990s. Doris Fiedrich photo, 2017.

Artist and teacher:

BC Binning wasn’t just an important artist; as a teacher, he influenced architects such as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth. His tiled murals are still outside the BC Hydro building (now the Electra Building) on Burrard Street, as well as in and outside his West Vancouver house which was designated a heritage building in 1999 and a National Historic Site in 2001.

BC Binning’s home, interior mural. Parks Canada photo

Murals:

What you can’t see are the murals that he created for the old Vancouver Public Library on Robson Street, or the 76.2 metre-long mural he created in 1956 to wrap around the CKWX building on Burrard Street. That building was replaced by a 20-storey condo tower just 33 years later.

BC Binning’s mural decorated this building from 1956 until it was demolished in 1989. Selwyn Pullen photo, 1956

The University of British Columbia came up with most of the $8,000 needed to rescue a 7.3 metre section of the CKWX mural, while Andrew Todd, a Vancouver conservator was charged with prying Binning’s blue, green and yellow mosaic off the wall, tile by tile, and placing it on a rolled canvas for storage at UBC. “Oh my god it was tough to save,” Todd told me. “It was an abstract arrangement of one-inch glass tiles from Venice, much like his mural on the BC Hydro Building. And it was huge, maybe 20 feet by 10 feet (six by three metres) in sections.”

The old Vancouver Public Library on Robson. Vancouver Archives photo ca.1972

The saved section of the mural was to be installed on a proposed studio-resources building, which was to house the university’s fine arts program. The building was never built, and the mural has apparently disappeared.

Tags Andrew Todd, Arthur Erickson, BC Binning, BC Hydro building, Electra, Fred Hollingsworth, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullen; CKWX, Vancouver Exposed

West Coast Modern Architecture

by Eve Lazarus on June 15, 2018

There is a chapter in Sensational Vancouver called West Coast Modern which explains the connections between artists and architects and the West Coast Modern movement in Vancouver.

Last week I wrote about Selwyn Pullan’s photography exhibition currently on display at the West Vancouver Museum. I focused on his shots of West Coast Modern houses now almost all obliterated from the landscape.

But Selwyn also did a lot of commercial photography and one of his largest clients was Thompson Berwick Pratt, the architecture firm headed up by Ned Pratt who hired and mentored some of our most influential West Coast Modern architects. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Paul Merrick, Barry Downs and Fred Hollingsworth all cut their teeth at TBP, and BC Binning consulted on much of the art that went along with the buildings.

Ned Pratt:

Ned Pratt’s crowning achievement was winning the commission to design the BC Electric building on Burrard Street—a game changer in the early 1950s. While the building is still there, now dwarfed by glass towers and repurposed into the Electra—a few of the firm’s other creations are long gone.

There was the Clarke Simpkins car dealership built in 1963 on West Georgia that demonstrated Vancouver’s growing fascination with neon.

CKWX

Our love for neon also showed up in the former CKWX headquarters at 1275 Burrard Street. According to the Modern Movement Architecture in BC (MOMO) the building won the Massey Silver Medal in 1958. “This skylit concrete bunker was home to one of Vancouver’s major radio stations until the late 1980s. The glassed-in entrance showcased wall mosaics by BC Binning, their blue-gray tile patterns symbolizing the electronic gathering and transmission of information.”

The building is long gone, replaced by a 20-storey condo building called The Ellington in 1990.

The Ritz Hotel at 1040 West Georgia was originally a 1912 apartment building. It was remodeled into a hotel when this photo was taken in 1956 and demolished in 1982. It was replaced by the 22-storey hideous gold Grosvenor building. Selwyn Pullan photo

I wonder what happened to the murals?

Top photo: Clarke Simpkins Dealership, 1345 West Georgia. Built 1963, demolished 1993. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1963.

Tags Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Binning, BC Electric Building, CKWX, Clarke Simpkins, Electra, Fred Hollingsworth, Ned Pratt, Paul Merrick, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Thompson Berwick Pratt, West Vancouver Museum

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

* 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.

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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