Gabriola

Heritage Streeters with Anne Banner, Tom Carter, Kerry Gold and Anthony Norfolk

by Eve Lazarus on February 6, 2016

This is part four in an occasional series that asks people who work in and around heritage to tell us their favourite buildings and the one that we should never have destroyed.

Anne Banner is the proprietress of Salmagundi, an antiques, oddities and novelties shop located in the J.W.Horne Block.

My favourite existing building in Vancouver is the J.W.Horne Block. The building runs from 311-321 West Cordova Street in Gastown. Construction started shortly after the Great Fire of 1886 and it was completed in 1889.

This brick, flat iron building is still standing, but last century it was much more exquisite and has lost much of its former beauty. Gone are the Victorian Italianate architectural details. In the early days the building had a magnificent turret and cornices decorated with a Freemason motif. Although these design elements have been erased it’s still my favourite building because it’s old and has a ton of character both inside and out.

Tom Carter has been painting historical views of Vancouver for many years, and has artwork in prominent private and corporate collections. Tom is on the board of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame. You can read more about his work in Vancouver Confidential “Nightclub Czars of Vancouver and the Death of Vaudeville.”

Favourite existing building:

It’s a miracle that Gabriola has survived. The old Rogers mansion is the last of the West End mansions, since the Legg house was demolished last year. It’s also probably the best of the bunch, as it was used in all sorts of early Vancouver promotional materials as an example of a typical “pretty home”. Clearly not typical then or now! The design is spectacular, as is the workmanship and the incredible piece of stained glass over the stairway.

The building that we never should have torn down:

The first Pantages at Hastings near Main was torn down just a few years ago. As the oldest surviving Pantages, the oldest surviving vaudeville theatre in Canada and a building where a lot of Vancouver history played out, the theatre was clearly important historically. It had an incredible restoration plan, a lot of public support, and would have provided a theatre/meeting space that will actually be needed in this neighbourhood. Its loss was preventable, a tragedy for theatre history nationally, and a loss to the DTES community. Our city council really bungled this one up!

Kerry Gold is a born and raised Vancouver journalist who is a contributor to Vancouver Vanishes: Narratives of Demolition and Revival. Kerry also writes a real estate column about heritage preservation, housing affordability and Vancouver’s growth and transformation for the Globe and Mail.

Favourite building:

I love this little house, which is in my neighbourhood, because it is small, and in perfect proportion to the corner lot it sits on. It still has the mullioned windows on both the front porch and back sunroom. It’s basically a cottage within the city, and I suspect the owners love it too, because of the maintenance of its original details, including an era-appropriate font used for the address numbers. The house must be circa 1910, an ode to the days when it was all about the details, not the square footage.

Photo 2004, Canada's Historic Places — Photo 2004, Canada’s Historic Places

The building that we should not be tearing down:

The Mercer and Mercer art deco inspired building at the corner of East Hastings and Gore was built in the late 1940s for the Salvation Army and spent time as a Buddhist temple before BC Housing purchased it and used it for storage. Now, it’s up for redevelopment, which is tragic because we don’t have many deco designs left from that era. Enough with the endless rows of green glass and concrete towers. Our architecture is mind-numbingly boring. Let’s preserve this beautiful old building and bring history and colour to the downtown eastside.

Anthony Norfolk is a retired lawyer and past President of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver and of Roedde House Preservation Society. His longstanding record of Heritage Advocacy was recognised by a City of Vancouver award in 2011. He currently sits on the City’s Heritage Commission.

Favourite building:

Is, not surprisingly, Roedde House. Now a museum, and part of Barclay Heritage Square, Roedde House is a survivor from the early development of the West End. It was built in the Queen Anne style for the Roeddes in 1893 and designed by Francis Rattenbury with one of the architect’s characteristic turrets on one side. The museum celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2015.

The building that we never should have torn down:

The first Pantages Theatre (1907) on Hastings Street just west of the Carnegie Centre at Main Street. When City Opera Vancouver was looking for a home I steered them to the vacant and deteriorating Pantages, and to the late Jim Green. With the support of the owner, a plan was developed for City Council to purchase the theatre and adjoining properties. The theatre would be restored, and a social housing development constructed. Unfortunately, when the theatre was demolished due to neglect in 2011, Council was still studying the proposal.

See previous Heritage Streeters:

Tags 311-321 West Cordova Street, Anne Banner, Anthony Norfolk, Gabriola, J.W. Horne Block, Kerry Gold, Legg House, Pantages Theatre, Roedde House, Salmagundi, Tom Carter, Vancouver Confidential, Vancouver Vanishes

Who was Maxine?

by Eve Lazarus on September 13, 2014

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.

1215 Bidwell Street, Vancouver — 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’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 4^th 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

Tags B.T. Rogers, Dominion Building, Gabriola, Ivor Ewan Bebb, John Atkin, Max-Ivor Company, Maxine Apartments, Maxine MacGilvray, Maxine's Beauty School, Spencer's department store, Thomas B. McArravy, Vancouver Heritage Foundation

The Last of the West End Mansions

by Eve Lazarus on May 4, 2013

Heritage Vancouver released its annual top 10 endangered site list today and it spells more bad news for the last of the West End mansions.

The heritage conservation organization has flagged three properties: the Legg Residence at 1245 Harwood Street, Gabriola Mansion at 1531 Davie Street, and three houses that sit side by side at 1301, 1309 and 1315 Davie Street.

Built in 1901 for BT Rogers, the Sugar King — Gabriola in 1904

I wrote about Vancouver’s West End mansions at the turn-of-the-century in At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver’s heritage homes. Back then the West End was the place where the wealthy flittered from manor to manor, presenting calling cards, and sipping on lemonade while playing croquet and badminton on manicured lawns.

In 1908 a book with the unlikely title of the Vancouver Elite Directory, reported that 86% of those who rated a listing lived in the West End, while 6% lived downtown and the rest were scattered throughout Point Grey, Kitsilano and Fairview, with a few holdouts still in the East End.

The Abbott House at 720 Jervis was saved when the city gave developers the go-ahead to build two extra floors on each tower as a heritage density bonus in exchange for saving and renovating the old mansion. Unfortunately, the heritage density transfer, which could help save the West End, is a distant memory.

The Legg residence was built in 1899 — 1245 Harwood Street

Gordon T. Legg, the managing director of the Union Steamship Company lived at 1245 Harwood, a gorgeous arts and crafts house built in 1899, and right next door to the largest known Tulip tree in the city. Originally the city did a deal with the devil, where the house would be saved in return for a 18-storey tower. It wasn’t a bad compromise, but the pending loss of the 100-year-old Tulip tree upset the neighbours, and in the latest bizarre scenario, we are saving a tree to sacrifice the century-old mansion.

It is a tragic loss to the West End, which as Heritage Vancouver points out, is one of only three estate homes that remain from the turn of the last century, the others are three heritage homes on Davie Street, and the one that I’m most upset about–Gabriola at 1523 Davie.

Most people remember Gabriola as a Hy’s Mansion or a Romano’s Macaroni Grill, but it was originally designed in 1900 by Samuel Maclure for Benjamin Tingley Rogers, the Sugar King. At one time the mansion occupied the entire block with stables, outbuildings and greenhouses. Stained glass was created by the Bloomfields, it had 18 fireplaces, and got its name from the green sandstone on the outside that was quarried on Gabriola Island.

The mansion has been boarded up for several years. Keg Restaurants bought it and announced plans for a restaurant back in 2011. But Gabriola still sits vacant, a target for vandals and a wet dream for developers.

For more on the West End see:

Tags 1245 Harwood Street, 1523 Davie Street, BT Rogers, Gabriola, Gordon T. Legg, Heritage Vancouver

The Story of Brock House

by Eve Lazarus on November 8, 2012

I’m a huge fan of Samuel Maclure, a BC-born architect with an incredible design range. Maclure designed almost 500 houses in his 40-year career including the audacious Hatley Castle in Victoria, Gabriola on Davie Street, and Brock House at Jericho Beach.

There are several books about Samuel Maclure, but my favourite is Janet Bingham’s.

It’s been out of print for years so I was delighted to see that she has contributed a section to Thorley Park to Brock House: from family home to heritage landmark 1912-2012, a book that celebrates the house’s 100^th anniversary.

The book is filled with archival photos and has undergone some skilful editing by Jo Pleshakov who was also involved in the Story of Dunbar in 2009. But what I enjoyed most was reading the different points of view from family members who either lived there at some point or had some other personal connection to the house.

Richard and Andrew Gilman, descendants of the original owner Philip Gilman kick off the first section. Gilman commissioned Maclure to design his house in 1909, although according to Bingham, he was exceptionally hands on and his attention to detail was “intensive.”

Gilman came to BC to work as an assayer for the government of BC after spending his early school years in Paris, Rome and Madrid, and studying mining and metallurgy at an English university. He became part of a land syndicate and by 1910 had land holdings worth more than $2.5 million, and is said to have told his wife that “only Armageddon could damage our progress at this point.”

Armageddon hit BC in 1913, and like many others Gilman lost his fortune. He managed to hang on to the house until 1922 when it sold to Mildred Brock for $40,000.

Peter Brock takes over the story and tells us that for the next 13 years, Mildred and Reg raised four sons, and entertained a bunch of interesting people including Bertrand Russell, Sir Percy Sykes, Lord and Lady Allenby and Lady Baden-Powell. In 1935, she and Reg died in a plane crash near Whistler.

In the 1930s mansions were not in demand and eventually the Brock’s children sold the house for the fire sale price of $11,000 to mining executive David Tait. Tait’s grandson Robert McConnell takes the story of the house up until 1952, when it became offices for the RCMP and the story is handed over to Staff Sgt. Major Bob Underhill.

By 1971, the RCMP had left the building and it stood empty. Jericho Tennis Club and the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club pooled their resources and offered $300,000, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation offered $1. Neither offer was accepted. As the years passed the house was broken into and vandalized, was turned into a movie set for the National Film Board. It is now a senior’s activity centre.

Tags Brock House, David Tait, Gabriola, Hatley Castle, Janet Bingham, Jo Pleshakov, Mildred Brock, Philip Gilman, Samuel Maclure, Thorley Park

The Shannon Estate: Fourth most endangered heritage site

by Eve Lazarus on February 27, 2011

Last week Heritage Vancouver released its annual top ten list of endangered heritage sites in Vancouver. Three schools topped the list, but the residence considered most in danger is the four-hectare Shannon Estate at the corner of Granville and 57^th. Note that it’s not the 40-room mansion that’s under threat, it’s Shannon Mews, the infill townhouse development designed by Arthur Erickson, that’s on the block.

The Shannon Estate is valued at $43 million and because the estate is a huge chunk of land in a sought after area, it’s not going to stay the way it is now. It’s also under the allowable density and that’s a problem because loading up the density on the site with glass and steel towers will most definitely impact the context of the estate, which at the moment, still feels like an estate.

Shannon Mews–Erickson Massey designed townhouse development, 2011

The City of Vancouver gives developers density bonuses to preserve and maintain heritage in Vancouver. In other words, instead of levelling an old mansion for a 20-storey skyscraper, a developer would incorporate the mansion into the development in exchange for a 22-storey skyscraper. The 1899 mansion at the corner of Georgia and Jervis Streets that sits next to two 37-storey towers is an example. For saving the house and turning it into five condos, Wall Financial Corp (which also owns Shannon) got two extra floors on each tower as their heritage density bonus.

The problem, says Donald Luxton, president of Heritage Vancouver, is that the City has stopped using density bonuses strictly for heritage, but is now using them for everything from daycare to social housing. “What we are asking,” Luxton told the Vancouver Historical Society, “is how much is too much?”

B.T. Rogers

I wrote the story of Shannon in At Home with History, and it’s a fascinating one. B.T. Rogers, Vancouver’s first millionaire industrialist and founder of BC Sugar, built the Samuel Maclure-designed Gabriola on Davie Street in 1900. A decade later, Rogers bought 10 acres in the country and had Somervell & Putnam architects design a house that would be the largest west of Toronto. Unfortunately, the economy tanked in 1913 and war broke out the following year, delaying construction until 1915. Three years later, Rogers, 52, died from a cerebral haemorrhage leaving his widow Mary to raise seven children at Gabriola. Mary finished Shannon in 1925 and lived there for 11 years until selling Shannon to Austin C Taylor, president of Bralorne gold mine for $105,600. Taylor stayed until his death in 1965. Developer Peter Wall bought Shannon and hired architect Arthur Erickson to turn the property into a housing development.

Wall Financial Corp's proposal to replace Shannon Mews — The proposed development at 57th and Granville

The 14-storey Tower Proposal

At present there are 162 suites in the two-storey buildings designed by Erickson Massey in 1974. The current proposal leaves the mansion, coach and gate house intact, retains some of the landscaping, but razes the entire townhouse development and most of the surrounding trees. In place of the townhouses are two towers of 13 and 14-stories and several smaller ones scattered about that bring the total count of suites to 891 and increase the number of residents from 340 to 1,600.

Tags 7255 Granville Street, Arthur Erickson, Austin C. Taylor, Benjamin Tingley Rogers, City of Vancouver, Donald Luxton, Erickson Massey, Gabriola, Heritage density bonuses, Heritage Vancouver Society, Mary Rogers, Peter Wall, Samuel Maclure, Shannon Mews, Somervell & Putnam, Wall Financial Corp

Three Houses of Samuel Maclure

by Eve Lazarus on September 13, 2010

Chances are if you live in Vancouver or Victoria you’ve either been inside a Maclure house or at least walked by one. Sam Maclure has his fingerprints all over dozens of houses in Shaughnessy, Oak Bay and Rockland, many with grand central halls and lots of wood panelling, as well as more modest houses in New Westminster and James Bay. In total he designed almost 500 houses during his 40-year career.

825 Foul Bay Road — Designed by Samuel Maclure in 1910, Photo from Sensational Victoria, 2011

I wrote a lot about Maclure in both At Home with History and Sensational Victoria. The architect shook up both cities using early Tudor, Queen Anne, Arts and Crafts and Chalet styles and turned them into his own West Coast style using native woods—he even designed the gardens.

Born in New Westminster in 1860, Maclure started out as a telegrapher, taught himself architecture and began designing homes in 1890. In 1892 he hung up his shingle in Victoria and advertised in The Colonist that “S. Maclure, architect, also designer of artistic furniture and interior decorations. Address room 13, Five Sisters’ block.”

Unfortunately the Five Sisters’ Block and Maclure’s own homes – two in James Bay and a third on Beach Drive in Oak Bay are all gone.

But Maclure fans can take in three of his Victoria houses on Saturday October 16. The tour, put on by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation is led by Martin Segger, an expert on Maclure and the author of Victoria, An Architectural History (1979) and The Buildings of Samuel Maclure: In Search of Appropriate Form (1986).

Segger will give the introductory lecture at the Legacy Gallery before the tour which will take in three houses, one in Rockland and two in Oak Bay. The Charles Fox Todd house on St. Charles Street was built in 1907 at a cost of $16,000. Called Illahie (meaning ‘our land’ in Chinook), it is a massive Arts and Crafts house that was converted into six suites in 1943. Maclure designed Tor Lodge, the second house on Foul Bay Road in 1907 for J.J. Shallcross and it’s described as a “fine example of the Arts and Crafts/Chalet architectural style.” The owner of the third house built in 1910 for W.H. Churchman-Kirkbride has just completed a massive renovation. It’s a nice example of an American Arts and Craft, and since 1992, has housed Emily Carr’s 1914 cottage in the back. The cost of the tour is $150 plus tax and includes bus, ferries, lunch and lecture. You can sign up at www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org.

403 St. George Street, New Westminster. New Westminster Heritage, 1902.

Some other Maclure houses:

The flamboyant Queen Anne at 403 St. Georges Street, New Westminster (1890)

Gabriola, 1523 Davie Street, Vancouver (1905) and now Romano’s Macaroni Grill

Hatley Castle, now Royal Roads University in Victoria (1908)

Brock House, 3875 Point Grey Road, Vancouver (1911)

W.C. Nichol House, 1402 McRae Avenue, Vancouver (1913)

Tags Brock House, Five Sisters Block, Gabriola, Hatley Castle, Illahie, Martin Segger, Tor Lodge, Vancouver Heritage Foundation

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B.T. Rogers

Some other Maclure houses:

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