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McCarter and Nairne

Missing Heritage: Firehall #2

by Eve Lazarus on August 7, 2020
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Firehall #2 was designed by William Blackmore in 1888 at 724 Seymour but it would be another decade before the VFD started paying its firemen. 

Firehall #2 on a training day in 1923. Vancouver Archives photo that really pops thanks to Canadian Colour

I’ve been having a lot of fun putting together my new book Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History  over the last year or so. It’s given me the excuse to zero in on different streets particularly in Vancouver and the West End and show the changes that have occurred there over a hundred years or more.

I didn’t get to the 700-block Seymour Street, but I’ve always been intrigued by photos of the old firehall #2 that used to be at 754 Seymour Street.

700-block Seymour Street in 1947. With thanks to Murray Maisey for this annotated photo.
Changing Vancouver:

A White Spot restaurant in a building designed by McCarter and Nairne in the mid-70s used to be on the corner of West Georgia, and for years I got my hair cut at Crimpers on the ground floor. Long before that, there was a row of three-story wooden rental houses stretched along Georgia.

Georgia and Seymour Street in 1981. CVA 779 E05.36

Now the whole city block bounded by Georgia Street, Richards, Seymour and Robson is part of  the massive Telus Garden development. But before Telus swallowed up the east side of Seymour Street it housed a couple of really interesting buildings and some pretty nice houses.

The original Firehall #2 at 724 Seymour. Courtesy Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society

One of them was Firehall #2.

Second Firehall:

The early version of the Vancouver Fire Department opened in May 1886, just a couple of weeks before the city burned to the ground in the Great Fire. William Blackmore designed the first Firehall #2 at 724 Seymour in 1888, but it would be another decade before the VFD started paying its firemen—they started at $15 a month.

Firehall #2, 1913. CVA 677-262

The second Firehall #2 went up in 1903 just a little up the block at 754 Seymour.

Judging by the photos a lot of training took place there.

Training at Firehall #2, 1923. Glad he’s got a net! Courtesy Vancouver Fire Fighters Historical Society

The firehall sat next to BC Tel’s headquarters until 1950 when the building sold to BC Tel and became part of the telco.

The firehall is now located in a modernist structure at Main and Powell where it is apparently the busiest firehall in Western Canada, nestled as it is in the heart of the troubled DTES.

For more information on the 700-block Seymour Street please see:

Vancouver as it Was blog

Changing Vancouver Blog 

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

 

Finding the Rhea Sisters  

by Eve Lazarus on March 17, 2018
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Courtesy Ital Decor

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

I was driving along Hastings the other day when I saw a huge statue in the yard of Ital Decor in Burnaby. It looked suspiciously like one of the WW1 nurses that guarded the 10th floor of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building before it was imploded in 1989.

Mario Tinucci of Ital Décor, says the one in his yard is a fibreglass version that he cast from an original nurse, and made in 1990. It was the first of four that were replicated—the other three are attached to Cathedral Place, the Paul Merrick-designed tower that replaced the GM-DB.

The three “Sisters of Mercy” were affectionately known as the Rhea Sisters—Gono, Pyor and Dia.

Ital Decor , 6886 Hastings Street, Burnaby

According to newspaper articles, the eleven-foot-high terra cotta nurses, designed by Joseph Francis Watson, weighed several tonnes each and were in rough shape when they came down. The cost to fix them was upwards of $70,000 each.

Instead, developer Ron Shon donated all three to the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. He also donated some of the terra cotta animals, spandrel panels and chevron mouldings from the main entrance, and the secondary arch (the main one is in the Bill Reid Gallery which is currently closed for renovations).

Photo courtesy Ital Decor

In 1992, the VHF had their first fundraiser at the Museum of Vancouver’s parking lot and sold off pieces of the GM-DB’s terra cotta.

Maurice Guibord, who was manager of community affairs for the MoV, paid $100 for a piece of the archway, now in his garden, and which came with Certificate of Authenticity #92.

The VHF donated one of the nurses to the MoV in 2000, and later sold the two original nurses to Discovery Parks at UBC.

Nurses on the Technology Enterprise Facility Building at UBC. Courtesy UBC

Wendy Nichols, curator of collections at the MoV, says their nurse is at UBC on a long-term loan agreement. I’m told all three original nurses are attached to the Technology Enterprise Facility 111 building completed in 2003, although only two are visible in this photo.

I never saw the GM-DB, and neither did Maurice, but on Thursday he, Tom Carter and I took a field trip to Cathedral Place. Tom prefers Cathedral Place to the original art deco building because he says the back was unfinished, and the building was only ever designed to be viewed from the front.

Maurice and Tom inside the Cathedral building with the mystery head

Robin Ward described the GM-DB’s “Mayan/Hollywood style lobby” in 1988. “It’s like a film set for a bank robbery in Mexico City,” he wrote.

I get what he means. The lobby in Cathedral Place is very similar to the Marine Building complete with brass doors on the elevators. (The Marine Building and the GM-DB were both designed by McCarter and Nairne architects).

The Hotel Vancouver from the courtyard. Cathedral Place on the left, Christ Church Cathedral on the right. Eve Lazarus photo.

It’s easy to appreciate Merrick’s skill when you get into the monastery-like courtyard that joins Cathedral Place to Christ Church Cathedral and the Bill Reid Gallery. He has used a similar CP Hotel-style roof to complement the Hotel Vancouver’s copper lid, and gothic touches and cloisters to connect the buildings together.

Now the questions remain:

    • Is the head that is displayed at Cathedral Place terra cotta or fibreglass (we couldn’t tell) and where did it come from? (There were three original nurses that are now at UBC and four fibreglass moulds—three are attached to Cathedral Place and one is at Ital Décor)
    • What is the connection between the Technology Enterprise Facility Building and BC’s nursing history?
The Georgia Medical-Dental Building in 1973. CourtesyCVA 65-2

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

The Marine Building and the Little House Next Door

by Eve Lazarus on April 15, 2017
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It’s hard to imagine today, but when the Marine Building opened in 1930 it was the tallest building in Vancouver and stayed that way for more than a decade. If you look at the photo (below), you can see that when architects McCarter and Nairne, designed it, four of the 22 floors were built into the cliff above the CPR railway tracks. You can also see the second version of the Quadra Club and then what looks like an old shack perched on the edge of the cliff.

W.J. Moore’s 1935 photo of the Marine Building, the Quadra Club and Frank Holt’s cabin. CVA BU N7

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

I recently came across this war-time newspaper advertorial by Vancouver Breweries Limited. It shows the same 1935 photo, and circled is “the oldest building in Vancouver.”

Do you know Vancouver?

According to the story, part of a series called “Do you know Vancouver!” the tiny house was used by CPR land commissioner Lauchlan Hamilton when he was surveying Vancouver in 1885. “Using the old cottage as a mark, Hamilton set the lines of our present Hastings Street, on which the street system of Vancouver is based,” goes the story. “When John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir visited Vancouver for the last time as Governor General of Canada, his attention was called to this shabby little relic of our past. ‘I hope the people of Vancouver will preserve it!’ he exclaimed, fervently.”

Well, no sir, we did not.

Spratt’s Oilery:

The little house was built in 1875 as a mess hall for Spratt’s Oilery and originally had five rooms. It survived the Great Fire, and in 1894, Frank Holt moved in. When the cannery moved out, Holt stayed on. When Frank found out that four of the rooms were taxable because they were on city property, he tore them down, and stayed in the one-room shack. He was still living there in 1943 when the foundations started to give way and the front porch fell down the embankment. Frank, who was 90 at the time, helped workers install a new foundation.

Then in 1946 a fire broke out and trapped Frank in the house. Miraculously, firefighters found Frank in the debris and carried him to safety. The house was not so lucky.

Marine Building, photo courtesy Pricetags blog

Frank came to Vancouver on the first transcontinental train. He was one of the founders of Christ Church Cathedral, and lived as a squatter in the one-room house in the shadow of the Marine Building for over half a century.

He died in December 1946, less than two months after his home burned down.

Related:

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

The Marine Building – Built on Rum

by Eve Lazarus on August 9, 2013
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I thought the Marine Building was built by the Guinness family until I started doing some research on this Art Deco icon—one of my favourite buildings in Vancouver.  And while the Guinness family did eventually own it, the developer was a local guy who made a fortune during Prohibition.

Marine Building
Marine Building in 1947. CVA #Bu P346

From Sensational Vancouver

Joe Hobbs:

Joe Hobbs arrived in Vancouver around 1920—the start of US Prohibition. He founded Hobbs Bros, a ship holding company and front for his smuggling activities, and went about converting luxury yachts into rum running vessels.

Joe Hobbs house on Laurier. Eve Lazarus photo

By 1925 Hobbs had made enough money to build a Shaughnessy mansion at 1656 Laurier Street, and three years later he went legit and became the vice-president of Toronto-based G.A. Stimson and Co. Ltd., Canada’s oldest bond company.

Hobbs wanted to build a monument to the city. Stimson’s saw it as an opportunity to expand the company into Western Canada. With the financing in place they secured the land at the foot of Burrard and Hastings Street.

The Elevator operators of the Marine Building. Art Grice photo, 1972 CVA 677-915
First High rise:

McCarter and Nairne, the same architects that designed the Devonshire Hotel, Georgia Medical and Dental Centre and the Livestock building, designed the Marine Building—the first high rise office tower in the city. The architect’s plans called for a “great crag rising from the sea clinging with sea flora and fauna, tinted in sea-green, touched with gold.”

After spending half a day crawling around the inside and outside (unfortunately not the penthouse) I’d say they accomplished what they set out to do. The details are amazing—from the five-foot King Neptune that stands guard from the 16th floor, to the three-dimensional ships carved into the building’s main entrance.

Grand concourse:

When the building opened visitors found it so posh that they couldn’t get beyond the Grand Concourse—the 90-foot long entrance hall. They’d see a floor inlaid with signs of the Zodiac, tiles with whales and Viking ships, and a clock with sea creatures instead of numbers. The five elevators have intricate bronze starbursts on their doors, and when built, were the fastest on the continent outside of New York.

Art Grice photo, 1972 CVA

McCarter and Nairne moved into the 19th floor and stayed for the next 50 years. Directory listings read like a who’s who of business, with tenants that include the Vancouver Board of Trade, Merchants’ Exchange, Lloyds Register of Ships, and the American, Ecuadorian, Venezuela and Costa Rican Consulates. In 1933 there was even a birth control clinic, sharing the 16th floor with a number of shipping, grain and manufacturing companies.

December 16, 1930, CVA Str P20
Million Dollar Folly:

It was too late for Hobbs. People called it the “million dollar folly” because it went $1.1 million over budget, and it bankrupted Stimson’s. Hobbs offered his building to the City of Vancouver for $1 million, but they turned him down, and in 1933 the building sold to the Guinness family for $900,000. Company representative AJT Taylor converted what had been an observation deck into his luxury penthouse, opened an office in the building, bought what’s now the British Properties, and in 1937 opened the Lion’s Gate Bridge.

Related:

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

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