Fred Hollingsworth

West Coast Modern and Architect Barry Downs

by Eve Lazarus on July 5, 2014

Barry Downs architect designed his gorgeous West Coast Modern house in West Vancouver in 1979. He lived there until his death in July 2022 at 92.

From Sensational Vancouver

Barry Downs and the West Coast modern house he designed in 1979

Barry Downs house sits on top of a cliff 120 feet above West Vancouver’s Garrow Bay. The house is almost invisible from the busy street and built on multiple levels, with lots of glass that connects the indoors with the out.

Rapidly disappearing:

Most people don’t think of these gorgeous mid-century homes as “heritage,” but many are listed on the Heritage Register. Because they are typically small houses on large view lots, they are rapidly disappearing.

Barry figures we’ve lost about 50 percent of our mid-century housing stock.

Each step through the Downs’ house is like a journey of discovery. A window in the bathroom looks out onto the forest. Another window gives a view of Bowen Island, and another a glimpse of the rocky exterior. But it’s not until you step into the dining room that you can truly understand the brilliance of Barry’s design. The Strait of Georgia, Vancouver Island and the B.C. Coast line leaps out through floor to ceiling glass windows, and just for a moment it’s disorienting, like being suspended in space.

Marine Drive, West Vancouver. Barry Downs photo

Focus on the landscape:

“To me, it’s all to do with emotion, and you derive that from the building and its setting,” says Barry. “The focus for me has always been the landscape, the garden, the seasonal world.”

Barry trained at Thompson, Berwick and Pratt and worked with some of the city’s most exciting and imaginative architects. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick and B.C. Binning, at one time all worked under the guidance of Ned Pratt. Barry left to form a partnership with Fred Hollingsworth in 1963, and six years later he and Richard Archambault launched their own company with residential houses as their mainstay.

Barry Downs architect

“We built on narrow lots with simple and affordable post and beam houses. We designed houses that pushed up through the trees, that revolved around the idea of the big room, surrounded by the garden, and the view of the changing seasons,” he says.

Barry, a softly spoken man now in his 80s, is as low key as the houses that he designs. He’d just like to see more of them remain.

Tags Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Barry Downs, Berwick Pratt, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick, Richard Archambault, Ron Thom, Sensational Vancouver, Thompson, West Vancouver Museum

Ned Pratt’s West Coast Modern House

by Eve Lazarus on October 6, 2013

Peter Pratt renovated and restored the house his father designed in 1953

I spent the afternoon with architect Peter Pratt at his home in the British Properties yesterday. Peter’s father Ned Pratt designed the house in the early 1950s and lived there for most of his life. You’ve likely never heard of Ned Pratt, I hadn’t until recently, and I find that really interesting because he may just be the most important architect to come out of Vancouver. Pratt was a principal at Thompson, Berwick, Pratt and he hired and mentored some of the most influential architects of the time. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Paul Merrick, Barry Downs, Fred Hollingsworth, and artist BC Binning, all worked there at one point.

It was Pratt who designed the BC Electric building (BC Hydro) on Burrard Street and the Dal Grauer Substation next door, both game changers in architectural design in those early ‘50s. Binning did the murals for the building and Pratt helped Binning build his West Vancouver home—the house credited for kick starting the West Coast modern movement in BC.

“Pratt convinced BC Electric that a local firm with no experience in skyscraper design could handle the monumental task,” wrote architectural critic Robin Ward, in Pratt’s 1996 obituary. The drawings alone, if spread out would have covered five city blocks, noted Ward.

Mural designed by Ned Pratt and Ron Thom

When Peter took over the one-acre property and his childhood home, the house had started to leak and rot. “I don’t know how many times I heard ‘it’s a tear down Pratt, you can’t save it,” he said. “This is our home, it’s not so much an asset, it’s our home. It has a sense of place.”

Against all advice he decided to save what he could and restore it, keeping features such as a mural that Pratt and Ron Thom made from fiberglass and paper. Peter has moved walls around, taken out rooms, added skylights and put cork on the floors. He added bench seats out of reclaimed wood from the Pantages Theatre to go with a table his dad built.

Then Peter built his own post and beam home right next door. One side of the newer house is sheer glass and opens up onto the garden and a large water feature filled with fish. A courtyard connects the two houses and there are angles everywhere you look that give hints of what’s to come, what Peter calls “a process of discovery” that’s characteristic of these West Coast modern homes.

Ned’s house is 1,200 sq.ft. Peter’s is only slightly larger. Both are a nod to simplicity and scale and the importance of landscape. Proof that we don’t have to rip down these beautiful houses because they don’t fill out the lot.

View from Ned Pratt's living room — View from Ned Pratt’s living room

Tags Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Binning, Fred Hollingsworth, Ned Pratt, Paul Merrick, Peter Pratt, Ron Thom, Thompson Berwick Pratt

Boyd House

by Eve Lazarus on July 19, 2012

The story of Ron Thom and Boyd house appears in Sensational Vancouver

Kerry McPhedran is selling the house she bought in 1972. It’s not because she wants to—as a freelance writer, it’s her retirement plan, and because of its tony West Vancouver address, it comes with a hefty $1.9 million price tag—too steep for most of us.

And, that’s a problem for Kerry, because she won’t sell her home to anybody. The house nurtured her when she needed it, she values the part it played in the West Coast architectural movement through its architect Ron Thom, and she loves the aesthetic—one that works with the landscape, rather than imposing itself upon it.

“I want someone who really loves this house and who will be thrilled to be in it,” she says. “If you have lived in one you do feel your life is better having lived in that space.”

I parked on Duchess and climbed the stone stairs to the house, past massive cedars, dogwoods, sword ferns, salal and Oregon grape. You can just see the house from the street—the floor to ceiling glass walls and low roof meld with the surroundings.

Ron Thom

(Photo by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward)

The house was designed by Ron Thom in 1954, and named for its first owners—Joan and Bruce Boyd, artists who studied with Thom at the Vancouver School of Art, along with B.C. Binning, Jack Shadbolt and Gordon Smith.

It was a heady time for art and architecture and the West Coast’s challenging terrain and tight budgets were also the inspiration and career starters for Thom, Fred Hollingsworth and Arthur Erickson.

Because long before he designed the BC Electric Building, Massey College, the Shaw Festival Theatre, and the Toronto Zoo, Thom designed more than 60 houses, mostly on the North Shore. Many of these were bulldozed, including the Lynn Valley house Thom built for himself in 1948.

The houses were dubbed “midnight specials” because Thom and Hollingsworth designed them for $100 each, late at night while moonlighting from their day jobs.

When Kerry interviewed Hollingsworth for a Western Living article in 1990, four years after Thom’s death, he told her that it was an “exciting time.”

“We were doing little wee houses, mostly for people with no money—usually neighbours and art school graduates and staff,” he said.

Kerry is the third owner. Her office is in the same room where the Boyd’s once painted, and where the second owner, a voice coach, kept her piano.

Designed by Ron Thom in 1954 — Kerry McPhedran at Boyd House, 2012. Eve Lazarus photo

The house is small by today’s standards. But the open plan design, tongue-and-groove cedar, massive cinder-block fireplace, and what’s left of the original ox-blood coloured concrete floor, give it a snug, cozy feel.

Kerry has put her own stamp on the house. In 1977 John Keith-King designed a new kitchen and dining room and enlarged the master bedroom. Russell Hollingsworth, Fred’s son, punched in the skylights.

Kerry wants a new owner, not just a buyer who will tear it down, but she’s also realistic. She’s working to have the house included on the Community Heritage Register. And, just to be clear—because this seems to instill fear in buyer’s hearts—being on the Register does not mean designation, it means that a new owner will be eligible for a bunch of incentives, including the potential to build a second house at the bottom of the large lot.

The carpet’s a little tired, the bathroom needs a reno, and the skylights could be updated, but it’s time for someone else to put their stamp on the house and love it as much as Kerry. Maybe even become the house’s custodian for the next 40 years.

Tags 985 Duchess Avenue, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, B.C. Binning, BC Electric Building, Community Heritage Register, Fred Hollingsworth, Gordon Smith, Jack Shadbolt, Joan and Bruce Boyd, John Keith-King, Kerry McPhedran, Lynn Valley, Ron Thom, Russell Hollingsworth, West Vancouver

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