Pantages Theatre

Peter Pantages and the Polar Bear Swim

by Eve Lazarus on December 26, 2020

On January 1, 2020 the Polar Bear Swim celebrated its 100th anniversary. It was by far the biggest year ever, with about 7,000 people hitting the water of English Bay. Being an Aussie, I really don’t get the appeal of plunging into frigid salty water, but I do love the history behind this crazy local tradition.

This story is an excerpt from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Tony, Lisa and Basil Pantages, Herb Capozzi and Tony Ferraro at the Polar Bear Swim, January 1, 1978. Bill Keay photo, Vancouver Sun

Started in 1920:

Peter Pantages started the Polar Bear Swim in 1920, a year or so after he arrived in Vancouver from Andros, Greece. He worked at his Uncle Alexander’s Pantages Theatre on Hastings Street, and he’d swim at English Bay every day. Soon nine friends joined him on the daily dip. They became the first official members of the Polar Bear Club. Anyone who wanted to be president had to swim every day—no freezing rain, snow or sickness excused. It’s not surprising that Peter was voted president for the next 51 years.

In the early years, participants swam about 300 metres around the English Bay Pier. When that disappeared in 1939, there was a freestyle sprint to a red buoy 100 metres out from shore.

Polar Bear Swim, 1935. Photo courtesy Lisa Pantages

Swam every day:

When Peter swam alone on foggy Vancouver days, he’d find his way back to the beach by listening for the rattle of the streetcars at Denman and Davie. At other times, he’d leave a lighted red coal oil lantern to guide him back to shore.

Peter’s granddaughter, Lisa Pantages became president of the Polar Bear Swim in 1990 after taking over the mantel from her uncle Basil Pantages. The Pantages are still very much involved in the annual swim—but these days the Vancouver Parks Board manages the event and Lisa is the swim’s historian. “When you’ve been doing the swim for a number of years you really feel the history in Vancouver and I think that’s such an important element of it,” says Lisa. “It could be 1950 or 1980, and everybody has their own traditions but when you come together you can really feel the magical aspects of the swim.”

Diamond Ice Truck at the Polar Bear Swim, courtesy Lisa Pantages

Dress code:

Traditions include a lot of dressing up. Over the years there’s been black tie events, Vikings, Wonder Women, The Flash, wedding dresses, shark suits and pajamas. Some years there have also been skydivers, scuba divers, water skiers and windsurfers.

The water temperature has ranged from 2 to 9 degrees. In 1963, the Parks Board had to dig a trail through two feet of snow so swimmers could reach the water.

Peter died in Hawaii in 1971 when his heart gave out. He was swimming, of course. Over the course of his life he made at least 18,000 daily swims.

This story is an excerpt from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Tags Basil Pantages, Diamond Ice Truck, Herb Capozzi, Lisa Pantages, Pantages Theatre, Peter Pantages, Polar Bear Swim, Tony Ferraro, Tony Pantages

May 1, 1907: A Trip Across Vancouver

by Eve Lazarus on August 20, 2016

I’m writing a book about John F.C.B. Vance, the first forensic scientist in Vancouver, and this week I wrote about his first day of work as the new City Analyst. My book is non-fiction, but sometimes you need some creative license. My challenge was to get to get Vance from his house in Yaletown to Market Hall, a lovely long-gone gothic building on Westminster (Main Street) which doubled as City Hall.

You can read all about Inspector Vance, the murders that he helped to solve, and the history that he passed through in Blood, Sweat, and Fear.

Watch the book trailer here

Main and Hastings Street — Market Hall, 1928 CVA 1376.88

Vance takes the streetcar:

I decided that Vance would take the streetcar. I went to Vancouver Archives website, found a map of 1907, blew up the sections of downtown Vancouver, ran them off, taped them together and stuck them on my wall.

Map 191 1907

Next I played City Reflections. William Harbeck shot the earliest known surviving footage of Vancouver that year by mounting a hand-cranked camera to the front of a streetcar as it rattled through downtown and the West End. Just five years later poor William was dead, a victim of the Titanic, and the film disappeared for decades until it turned up in the home of an Australian film buff who thought he was looking at Hobart, Tasmania.

In 2007, the Vancouver Historical Society reshot the same route and put the two side by side.

You can watch the film here.

The CPR Station dominated the foot of Granville in this 1907 William Harbeck film

Missing heritage:

While it was fascinating to see what’s changed, I was surprised at how much has stayed the same. Back then, as now, construction was everywhere, on every block. The home of the new post office (Sinclair Centre) was going up at Hastings and Granville, as was Fire Hall No. 2 on East Cordova, and the recently defunct Pantages Theatre would soon open as a 1,200 seat vaudeville theatre. Slogans on banners shouted out the benefits of development. As today, Vancouver was attracting investment and visitors from around the world, and property prices were soaring.

Sinclair Centre — Post Office, 1910 CVA Str N117.1

The Vancouver Opera House and the second Hotel Vancouver are long gone, as is the CPR Station, a massive chateau-style building that dominated the foot of Granville Street. But Spencer’s Department store (now SFU) remains, as do several of the buildings between Richards and Homer. The former Royal Bank of Canada is now the film production campus of the Vancouver Film School, the Flack Block built in 1898 from proceeds from the Klondike is still east of Cambie, and what used to be the Central School, is now part of Vancouver Community College. Woods Hotel, just a year old when the film was shot, is now the Pennsylvania Hotel.

Hotel Pennsylvania, 412 Carrall Street, 1931 CVA 99-3895

Three daily newspapers:

In 1907, the Province was one of three daily newspapers. An ad that year boasted that it was read in 90 percent of Vancouver homes, and sold for five cents.

How those times have changed.

I’m not sure how long in real time it would have taken Vance to get to work that day, but it took me most of the week to get him there on paper.

Vancouver Opera House, 765 Granville Street — The Vancouver Opera House at Granville and Georgia in 1891. CVA Bu P509

Tags Central School, City Reflections, CPR Station, Daily Province, Fire Hall No. 2, Flack Block, john F.C.B. Vance, Market Hall, Pantages Theatre, Pennsylvania Hotel, Second Hotel Vancouver, Sinclair Centre, Vancouver City Hall, William Harbeck, Woods Hotel

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

Heritage Streeters with Michael Kluckner, Jess Quan, Lani Russwurm and Lisa Anne Smith

by Eve Lazarus on September 26, 2015

Continuing on with a series I started earlier this year, I’ve asked a few friends to tell me their favourite Vancouver building and the one they miss the most.

Michael Kluckner

Michael is the author of a dozen books. His most recent is Toshiko, a graphic novel set in BC in 1944. He is the president of the Vancouver Historical Society and a member of the city’s Heritage Commission.

Kerrisdale Grocery burned down in 1989 — Kerrisdale Grocery by Michael Kluckner

Michael says that one of his favourite buildings that’s missing from our landscape is the Kerrisdale Grocery which once stood at 49^th and Maple next to Magee High School. The 1914 grocery store burned down in 1989 and is captured in Michael’s painting (above) and appeared in his 1990 bestseller, Vanishing Vancouver.
“The Kerrisdale Grocery, and all the rest of the independently run neighbourhood stores in the city, reflected a time that appeared to be less dominated by multinational chains, where people supported local businesses, and where funky architecture was more common,” he says. “Corner stores, aka “Chinese groceries,” are historically important as well as the first businesses of new immigrants, especially Chinese and Japanese, in an earlier Vancouver of racial barriers and homogeneous white neighbourhoods. These stores are a version of the live-work spaces so trendy in the modern city, where a family could live behind or above the store. They are almost all gone now.”

Jessica Quan

Born in Germany, raised in Vancouver with roots in Steveston’s Japanese community and Victoria’s Chinatown, Jess discovered a love for heritage, history and architecture when living in Japan and London, UK. She is the Special Project Coordinator for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, and her projects include the Heritage Site Finder Interactive Map and the Places That Matter plaque program.

Jess Quan at a plaque presentation for King Edward High School

Jess says that her favourite heritage building is hidden on West 7th Avenue between Spruce and Oak in Fairview Slopes. She’s cagey about the actual address because she’s working on a plaque for it, but will say that it’s an A on the Vancouver Heritage Register. “It’s a wonderful example of the type of tenement buildings built along the Slopes for workers at the sawmills below. It’s hard to believe now how much heavy industry occupied False Creek, and it is a reminder of what life was like 100 years ago for the early immigrant workers who came to Vancouver—in this case Japanese, but also the Sikh.”

Vancouver City Hospital, 1906, CVA BU P369

Jess says if she had to pick one building that we should have kept it would be the original City Hospital (VGH) where the Easy Park Lot now stands at Pender and Cambie.

Lani Russwurm

Lani Russwurm has been blogging about Vancouver history since 2008 as Past Tense Vancouver. He is the author of Vancouver Was Awesome: A Curious Pictorial History (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013).

20 West Hastings Street — Demolished for a parking lot in 1967. Photo Leonard Frank, Jewish Museum & Archives of BC #LF.00218

Lani says of the long list of buildings that we’ve destroyed, one of the stupidest is the second Pantages Theatre. “It stood at 20 West Hastings, first as the Pantages, then the Beacon, the Majestic, and finally Hastings Odeon before it was demolished in 1967 for a parking lot for Army & Navy. In the 1930s, vaudeville legend Texas Guinan performed for the very last time there and a teenaged Yvonne De Carlo began her showbiz career there with a boxing kangaroo.,” he says. “This city has a rich theatre history, including vaudeville and motion picture houses, and the second Pantages may have been the best of the bunch.”

Marine Building — Photo by Otto F Landauer (1947), City of Vancouver Archives #Bu P346

Lani says his favourite building still standing is the Marine on Burrard. “Today it’s boxed in by taller, shinier towers, but for years it dominated Vancouver’s skyline and was once the tallest in the British Empire. Not only is it a great example of 1920s Art Deco architecture anywhere, but its maritime theme makes it specific to that place and time in Vancouver’s history.”

Lisa Anne Smith

Lisa Anne Smith is an education docent at the Museum of Vancouver and the author of Our Friend Joe: the Joe Fortes Story, and Vancouver is Ashes. She also wrote a children’s book about the RCMP ship the St. Roch.

As a curator for the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum (the oldest building in Vancouver), picking a favourite isn’t hard for Lisa. “The store dates from 1868 and as a Great Fire survivor, is the oldest building in Vancouver by far. It was barged over to its present site in 1930 and continues to be owned and maintained as a museum by Native Daughters of B.C. Post #1.”

Lisa Challenger map Lisa says that if she had to pick a building that she misses the most it would be the B.C. Pavilion which housed the Challenger Relief Map at the PNE. “The B.C. Pavilion was torn down in 1997 and the Challenger map was placed in storage,” she says (it’s currently at an Air Canada hangar at YVR. “I had the privilege of conducting gantry tours of the map during the 1976 and 1977 Pacific National Exhibitions. I still can’t believe they had the audacity to dismantle the thing! It’s a sad loss for the city and the province.”

Tags Challenger Relief Map, Jessica Quan, Kerrisdale Grocery, Lani Russwurm, Lisa Anne Smith, Marine Building, Michael Kluckner, Old Hastings Mill Store, Pantages Theatre, Past Tense Vancouver, Texas Guinan, Toshiko, Vancouver City Hospital, Yvonne de Carlo

Vancouver’s Missing Theatres

by Eve Lazarus on December 12, 2014

It’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago the Hastings Street area had a thriving theatre district, filled with opulent buildings, cafes and people, and known as the “Hastings Great White Way.”

The Rex Theatre, 25 West Hastings Street, 1914, CVA 99 240

In past blogs I’ve written about the Strand, the Pantages and the Empress–all theatres that once existed in downtown Vancouver, but have long since been turned into parking lots or cheaper, uninteresting buildings.

I decided to take a look at the city directories from 100 years ago and take a stroll through Vancouver’s theatre district. Just look what we’ve done with the space.

1920 — Columbia Theatre, 64 West Hastings, CVA 99-3293

In 1914 the National Theatre and the Columbia Theatre sat side by side at 58 and 64 West Hastings Street, just across from the Rex Theatre. The space is now a “developer ready” lot.

The Bijou Theatre sat at 333 Carrall Street just off Hastings Street. It was demolished in 1940. The photo (below) and the story of its life and death is at the Changing Vancouver blog.

In 1913, The Vancouver Opera House turned into the Orpheum Theatre and started showing vaudeville acts. The Orpheum (but not the one we have now) sat at the 700 block Granville Street. In the Leonard Frank photo below you can see the second Hotel Vancouver behind.

By 1935 the Orpheum had morphed into the Lyric and in 1969 it was a distant memory — demolished to make way for the Pacific Centre.

The gaudy Pacific Centre on the 700 block Granville

The Imperial Theatre was once part of a vibrant street scape along the 700-block Main.

700-block Main Street, ca.1918 CVA 99-1269

The theatre is long gone and the two adjacent buildings on the corner of Main and Union and what’s now the Brickyard are likely soon to be replaced by another boxy glass condo building.

The Star Theatre was at 327 Main Street in 1914.

Sources:

Changing Vancouver – then and now blog

Murray Maisey’s slide show on Hastings Theatre

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Vancouver’s Regent Hotel

by Eve Lazarus on May 17, 2014

I was standing on the 7^th floor of the Regent Hotel a few weeks back when a rat the size of my miniature schnauzer blew past. I just managed to stop myself from vaulting on top of John Atkin’s shoulders (the tallest structure in the hallway). John, it turns out, doesn’t just know buildings and neighbourhoods, he also knows rats. As he explained, because they are near blind, rats don’t run around things (like people), they stick to the wall and let their whiskers help them navigate.

At the Regent Hotel with John Atkin, Tom Carter and Judy Graves. Eve Lazarus photo, 2014

These days the Regent Hotel is a step up from living on the street, but only barely—residents fight a losing daily battle with rats, mice, cockroaches and bed bugs.

Just before the rat dashed by, we’d been discussing how the Regent Hotel was quite a ritzy place back when it opened in 1913, situated as it was in the heart of the theatre district. You can still see remnants—the wood floors and the marble staircase, which in the old days would have swept patrons down to the lobby where they could wait for their show to start.

Regent Hotel brochure courtesy Glen Mofford

As the Regent’s first brochure boasts, the hotel was five minutes walking distance of all theatres, a half block from the Carnegie Library and one block from the City Hall. It had a café that offered the “choicest that the management can procure,” 160 rooms “all light and airy,” 75 with a private bath and a telephone in every room.

The Regent Hotel, 1923 courtesy Vancouver Archives

The eight-storey hotel at 162 East Hastings Street, was designed by Emil Guenther and built for Arthur Clemes, who also owned the Pantages Theatre next door.

For more about our tour of the DTES:

The Main Street Barber Shop

The Smilin Buddha Cabaret

Tags 162 East Hastings Street, Art Clemes, Carnegie Library, Emil Guenther, John Atkin, Pantages Theatre, Regent Hotel

Our Missing Heritage: The Theatre District

by Eve Lazarus on October 20, 2013

Empress Theatre built in 1908 — Empress Theatre 1921

In 1913 Vancouver had a thriving theatre district that included eight movie theatres as well as stock theatres like the Pantages and the Empress——both completed in 1908.

Over the years we’ve managed to pretty well destroy all evidence of these theatres—the Capital, the Strand, two Orpheum theatres, and of course, most recently the Pantages Theatre at Main and Hastings that as Heritage Vancouver so succinctly put was “demolition by neglect.”

Theatre companies put on lavish productions at the Empress that called for sheep and horses on stage, as well as cars. For Faust, the stage crew built fire-breathing dragons 20-feet long; and for The Aviatrix they constructed a copy of the new Wright Brothers aeroplane and flew it on piano wire. At one point the Empress had the biggest stage west of Chicago.

By the late 1930s rising costs, movies and the shift of the city away from Main Street sounded the death knell for the Empress. But instead of finding a new use for the building, in 1940 down it came in a pile of rubble.

This is what we’ve done with the site.

Empress Theatre 1908-1940 — Once the site of the Empress Theatre

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

Tags Capital, Empress Theatre, Heritage Vancouver, Orpheum, Pantages Theatre, Strand

Save on Meats creates food currency for the DTES

by Eve Lazarus on December 15, 2012

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is a warehouse for the desperate: filled with crackheads, hookers, chronic alcoholics and the mentally unhinged. Drive down Hastings and it looks like a Dostoevsky novel. There are drug addicts shooting up in the alleys, pawn shops, scuzzy hotels and a myriad of agencies trying to unravel the mess.

This sketchy area—one of the poorest in the country—is getting a makeover, but not everybody thinks that’s a good thing.

The Pantages Theatre, a once beautiful building that told the story of early vaudeville in Vancouver, was ripped down last year. Five years ago the Woodwards Department Store was replaced with condos, and for a while it looked like Save on Meats—an institution since 1957—would suffer the same fate. But the owner refused to sell to developers and Mark Brand bought the business.

Save on Meats opened in 1957 at 43 W. Hastings

Brand, has sunk a ton of money into the building, kept the neon sign, a butcher shop, bakery and diner. He’s also employing the unemployable, installed a roof top garden to grow produce, and created a type of currency to feed the homeless.

The “currency” is a token that can only be exchanged for food at his diner. He kicked off the program at the end of November thinking he might sell a thousand. He sold 5,000 in the first 10 days. His reasoning is that give money or bus passes or gift cards and 90% of the time it’s turned into drugs, booze or cigarettes. It’s a big reason that people won’t give handouts.

“All it is, is giving somebody a sandwich, it’s really black and white,” he told me. “What’s really important to me is being able to create the conversation between the affluent and the people who are struggling. The token has to be handed to someone. You are not doing a random donation you have to look somebody in the face and give it to them.”

Brand is not without his critics. They say he’s part of the problem—he’s making the area trendy again and increasing rents and prices for the poor. He’s also accused of making money off the tokens—many which will never be redeemed.

Personally I don’t have a problem with this, he should be making money. He’s not going to fix the systemic problems of the DTES, but he’s not going to hurt them either, and he’s offering a way for people to do something to help those in the area.

He’s also attracting like minded souls.

Village&Co office, 231 Union Street

Justin Young and Nora Ahern were making big bucks at an ad agency on the right side of town, before leaving to form Village&Co, a small social media shop on the edge of Chinatown. They like Brand’s vision and wanted to help so they devised a campaign. Whenever someone clicks on #shareameal the agency puts a token on the office Christmas tree. On December 31, the tokens will be donated to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre and transformed into food at a time when it’s needed the most.

Tags Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, DTES, Justin Young, Mark Brand, neon sign, Nora Ahern, Pantages Theatre, Save on Meats, Village&Co, Woodwards Department Store

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