Heritage Vancouver Society

Making History with Facebook for 2015

by Eve Lazarus on December 26, 2015

Since this is my last blog for the year, I thought I’d put together a list of my top 10 favourite FB pages. My criteria is pretty simple: the page has to have a strong Greater Vancouver flavour, there has to be a historical element, and the page has to post reasonably often and with original postings.

In Alphabetical order……

1. City of Vancouver Archives (likes: 2,328)

The Archives does an amazing job as our official keeper and promoter of Vancouver’s history. But most importantly the Archives took the step a few years ago of digitizing tens of thousands of photos and making high res versions freely accessible to anyone who wants them. They also have a great blog.

2. Every Place has a Story (likes: 1,643)

I started this page a couple of years ago and it has grown into a mixture of curated material, photos and original posts (you really don’t know what you are getting from one day to the next because I’m never sure myself).

3. Foncie Pulice (likes: 1,384)

Most long time Vancouverites have at least one Foncie photo in their album, and his photos really touch a chord and say a lot about our history. Foncie took his first photo in 1934 and his last in 1979. He was the last of the street photographers

4. Forbidden Vancouver (likes: 5,518)

This is a local business run by Will Woods (shown wearing cool hat). Will has shaken up the idea of the walking tour, added some theatre and shows the sketchy side of Vancouver to locals and tourists. His FB posts reflect this side of Vancouver.

5. Heritage Vancouver Society (likes: 2,091)

For keeping Vancouver’s heritage buildings as an issue, for publishing the top 10 watch list of endangered buildings and for putting on great events that keep us interested in heritage. You need to follow this page.

6. North Vancouver Museum and Archives (likes: 2,091)

The North Vancouver Museum and Archives has been fundraising this year for a new museum that would live at the foot of Lonsdale. They’ve also ramped up their postings on FB and shared some really fascinating bits of local history and photos for people on both sides of the Inlet.

7. Vancouver Firefighters Historical Society (likes: 531)

Not all the photos are of burning buildings, some are shots of old equipment, trucks, parades, old Vancouver and heritage fire halls. And, if you’re in need of some eye candy pop over to The Hall of Flame calendar page — it’s okay it’s for the children!

8. Vancouver Heritage Foundation (likes: 3,334)

Through the annual heritage house tour, lectures series, walking tours, Places that Matter and their collateral, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation does an amazing job of keeping heritage important and fun. Follow this site for information about grants and events.

9. Vancouver Then (likes: 14,861)

I can’t say enough good things about Vancouver Then. Jeremy Hood posts consistently and often and he puts a huge amount of work and thought into his posts and photos about Vancouver. My favourites are his then and now posts that show how much we have changed, or in some cases, how much we haven’t.

10. Vancouver Vanishes (likes: 7,702)

Noted fiction author Caroline Adderson started this page a couple of years ago and has attracted a huge following of people who are just as outraged as she is by the demolition of character houses in Vancouver. Her relentless beating on City Hall has had real results and her page was the basis for Vancouver Vanishes, a book of essays with contributors such as Michael Kluckner, John Atkin, Kerry Gold, and me.

If I have missed any of your favourite pages, please leave a note in the comment section below!

Tags Caroline Adderson, City of Vancouver Archives, Eve Lazarus, Every Place has a Story, Foncie Pullice, Forbidden Vancouver, Hall of Flame Calendar, Heritage Vancouver Society, Jeremy Hood, John Atkin, Kerry Gold, Michael Kluckner, North Vancouver Museum and Archives, Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society, Vancouver Then, Vancouver Vanishes, Will Woods

Online Porn for History Nerds

by Eve Lazarus on May 23, 2015

When I was researching my 2007 book At Home with History I spent most of my life at the Vancouver Archives and on the 7^th floor of the Vancouver Public Library. Now, instead of trekking downtown, much of the information is available to me here at home.

Today, the digital world just got a bit better with the launch of three very cool new online toys.

Goad’s Fire Insurance Map

Vancouver Archives has made the Vanmap even more exciting by adding a layer from a 1912 Fire Insurance Plan. Once onto Vanmap click on aerial imagery and you’ll see Goad’s Fire Insurance map. Michael Kluckner took me for a digital tour of his Grandview neighbourhood of 1912 where we found an “Isolation Hospital,” a huge estate called Wilga, and Brook House, complete with its turret. I zoomed into the DTES with CVA archivist Heather Gordon and we could see all the 1912 businesses and brothels along Alexander Street as well as a sawmill and police station, and the original shoreline shown in dashed lines.

The map is colour coded—yellow represents wood framed buildings and the pink are brick and stone—mostly in the downtown area. See Sue Bigelow’s post for a clear description of all its uses.

2636 Trinity Street — Heritage Site Finder Map

Heritage Site Finder Interactive Map

I’ve spent hours playing on this interactive map by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. The map lists buildings and landmarks found on the Heritage Register—(and eventually other buildings not on the register) and there are around 2,300, many with photos and descriptions. It’s incredibly easy to navigate and you can search by address, zoom into an area, or just click on houses at random. This is a work in progress, so if you click on a building and can’t find a photo, keep trying. Better still if you have old photos of the building and information, send them to the VHF so they can add them. Eventually it will also be possible to add long demolished buildings so we can see how Vancouver looked through a historical filter.

digital building permits

Historic Building Permits online database

You’d think answering a question like ‘when was my house built?’ would be simple. It’s not. Or at least it wasn’t until Heritage Vancouver Society started to transcribe thousands of building permits (currently at 33,000) from the Vancouver Archives prior to 1929—the year Point Grey and South Vancouver amalgamated into the City of Vancouver. Before these permits were online—and it is a volunteer-dependent work-in-progress—you would have to go to the Archives and look through pages and pages of handwritten ledgers brought out to you in huge bound books. With the online database you can pull up every house built in a block, you can search for every building designed by a certain architect, or most impressive and simplest of all, you can find out when your house was built.

Tags 2636 Trinity Street, At Home with History, Brook House, City of Vancouver Archives, Goad's Fire Insurance Map, Heather Gordon, Heritage Site Finder, Heritage Vancouver Society, Historical Building Permits, Isolation Hospital, Michael Kluckner, Sue Bigelow, Vancouver Heritage Foundation, VanMap, Wilga

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

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