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Scotia Tower

Pacific Centre

by Eve Lazarus on March 13, 2021
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When the Pacific Centre took over Granville and Georgia Streets, it knocked out blocks of heritage buildings.

Story and photos from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Angus McIntyre got this shot in 1974 by leaning out of a window on the top floor of the Birks Building. The Granville Mall was under construction, and Eaton’s had just opened.
The Great White Urinal:

When I moved to Vancouver from Australia in the mid-1980s, locals had already had a dozen years to get used to Pacific Centre and the “Great White Urinal”—the name they’d not so affectionately dubbed the Eaton’s department store building. But it wasn’t until several years ago when I saw a 1924 photo showing the Strand Theatre, the Birks Building and the second Hotel Vancouver lined up along Georgia at Granville, that I realized how much we had lost.

In the 1970s, the Scotia Tower and Vancouver Centre took out the Strand Theatre and the Birks Building. CVA Str N201.1 1924

In the 1960s, city council wanted a redevelopment of downtown Vancouver with Georgia and Granville Streets as the epicentre. The fear was that the downtown core would lose business to suburban malls and the hope was that a new, modern shopping centre would attract people and breathe life back into that intersection. The thought was that this retail vibrancy would come through a superblock and underground parking that spread across several blocks.

In this photo taken by Angus McIntyre at a similar angle to top photo in 2020, you can still see the BC Electric building and part of St. Paul’s Hospital. Missing includes King George High School and Dawson Elementary
Superblock:

The superblock was made up of Block 52—bounded by Granville, Georgia, Howe and Robson; and Block 42—bounded by Granville, Georgia, Howe, and Dunsmuir. The problem was that the T. Eaton Company, which owned all of Block 52, wasn’t in a hurry to move from West Hastings (now SFU Harbour Centre) and a new department store was essential to anchor the proposed shopping mall.

Newly bulldozed Block 42 in 1973 and the 30-storey TD tower that replaced the parking lot that replaced the second Hotel Vancouver. CVA 23-24

The other problem was 18 individual landowners owned Block 42 and none of them wanted to sell. By the fifth redevelopment report in July 1964, a frustrated city council led by Mayor William Rathie were figuring out ways to expropriate their land.

An aerial view early 1960s showing the future site of the Pacific Centre and Robson Square. CVA 516-32
Vancouver’s Greatest Day:

In May 1968, the city held a plebiscite to allow them to buy up all the properties in Block 42 and 70 percent of voters agreed. The next mayor, Tom Campbell, told the press: “We’ve got a united city which wants a heart. Vancouver had only a past—today it has a future. This is Vancouver’s greatest day.”

The Eaton’s Marine Room had an outdoor patio that looked out onto Howe Street. Angus McIntyre took this photo in 1979 – you can still see the part of the Devonshire Hotel and the Georgia Medical Dental Building on West Georgia in the background.

By 1974, we had the Pacific Centre and Vancouver Centre shopping malls, much of it as an underground bunker. We’d rid the streets of gorgeous brick buildings and gained the IBM tower, the former Four Seasons Hotel, the Scotia Tower and a 30-storey black glass monument to capitalism in the TD Tower. Rather than revitalize the Granville and Georgia intersection, we sucked the life right out of it.

Related:

The Second Hotel Vancouver: What were we thinking?

Vancouver’s missing heritage buildings

Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

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

We held a funeral for the Birks Building

by Eve Lazarus on November 28, 2020
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At 2:00 pm on Sunday March 24, 1974, a group of about a 100 people, many of them students and professors from the UBC School of Architecture, came together in a mock funeral for the Birks Building, an eleven storey Edwardian masterpiece at Georgia and Granville with a terracotta façade and a curved front corner.

Angus McIntyre climbed up on the bed of a dump truck to capture this photo of protestors outside the Birks Building in 1974

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History (also the cover photo). Photos by Angus McIntyre

Program for the memorial service, courtesy Angus McIntyre
And the band played:

They marched from the old Vancouver Art Gallery at Georgia and Thurlow, led by a police escort and accompanied by a New Orleans funeral band playing a sombre dirge. The mourners assembled under the “meet me at the Birk’s clock,” an ornate iron timepiece that stood more than 20 feet tall and for decades had been a local landmark and familiar meeting place. For generations of Vancouverites, “Meet you at the Birks clock” was a common phrase.

The stunning Interior of the Birks Building. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974
An act of architectural vanalism:

On this day, it was too late to stop the demolition—it had already begun—but not too late to protest what author and artist Michael Kluckner and others have called an egregious act of architectural vandalism.

The crew working on the new building across the road shut off the air compressors and laid down their tools. Reverend Jack Kent, chaplain of the Vancouver Mariners Club officiated. He was accompanied by a choir.

“North Van bus on West Georgia Street is visible through the window. Conductor is standing on two Canada Dry wood boxes. It was the era of checks and flared pants,” Angus McIntyre, 1974

Angus McIntyre then 26, grabbed his Konica Autoreflex T2 35mm camera and rode his bike downtown to record the event.

Ceremony:

“There was a Gathering, a Sharing of Ideas, a Choir performance and a Laying of the Wreaths,” Angus told me. “A small group of people wearing recycled videotape clothing put hexes on new buildings nearby. As soon as it came time to return to the Art Gallery, the band switched to Dixieland jazz, and the mood became slightly more upbeat.”

Some protestors wore Video Armour crocheted out of used videotapes by Evelyn Roth. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974

And just like that, the beautiful old Birks Building—well not that old really—only 61 in 1974—was killed off to make way for the Scotia Tower and Vancouver Centre mall.

For a long time after the funeral, this R.I.P. banner hung in a second storey office window at the Sam Kee building on Pender Street. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974

The only positive thing to come out of the loss of this much-loved building was that it mobilized the heritage preservation community in Vancouver and saved many of our other fine old buildings such as the Orpheum Theatre, Hudson’s Bay, Waterfront Station, the Hotel Vancouver and the Marine Building—from a similar fate.

Inside Birks Building and the model of the Scotia Tower that will replace it. Angus McIntyre photo, 1974
Related:

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

Our missing heritage: the forgotten buildings of Bruce Price (1845-1903)

by Eve Lazarus on September 30, 2017
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In the 1970s, the Scotia Tower and the hideous Vancouver Centre—currently home to London Drugs—obliterated a block of beautiful heritage buildings at Granville and Georgia Streets. The development took out the Strand Theatre (built in 1920), and the iconic Birks building, an 11-storey Edwardian where generations of Vancouverites met at the clock.

The Birks building and the second and third Hotel Vancouver in 1946. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 586-4615

I was surprised to discover that when the Birks building opened in 1913, it took out three of Vancouver’s earliest office buildings, including the four-storey Sir Donald Smith block (named for Lord Strathcona) and designed by Bruce Price in 1888.

The Donald Smith building opposite the first Hotel Vancouver at Granville and Georgia in 1899. Courtesy Vancouver Archives Bu P60

According to Building the West, New York-based Price was one of the most fashionable architects of the late 19th century. He was the CPR’s architect of choice for a number of Canadian buildings, and although he designed several imposing buildings in Vancouver between 1886 and 1889, not one of them remains today.

The Van Horne block (named for the president of the CPR) at Granville and Dunsmuir, later became the Colonial Theatre, and one of Con Jone’s Don’t Argue tobacco stores, before becoming another casualty of the Pacific Centre in 1972 (see Past Tense blog for more information).

Originally known as the Van Horne building at 601-603 Granville, built in 1888/89. Courtesy Vancouver Archives 447-399 in 1972.

Price also designed the Crewe Block in the 600-block Granville: “built of brick and granite, with sixteen-inch pilasters running the height of the three-storey structure”* It lasted until 2001.

The granite-faced New York block (658 Granville) which Price designed in 1888, and the Daily World described as “the grandest building of its kind yet erected here, or for that matter in the Dominion,” would be replaced by the existing Hudson’s Bay store in the 1920s. According to the 1890 city directory, the building had a mixture of residents and businesses including the Dominion Brewing and Bottling Works, the CPR telegraph office, and John Milne Browning, the commissioner for the CPR Land Department.

1890 Vancouver City Directory

Browning lived at West Georgia and Burrard in a stone and brick duplex that Price designed, described as “Double Cottage B.”* According to Changing Vancouver, sugar baron BT Rogers bought the property in 1906, and had the house lifted, enlarged and turned into a hotel called the Glencoe Lodge.

The Brownings home in 1899 would become part of the Glencoe Lodge. Courtesy Vancouver Archives Bu N414

The hotel was torn down to make way for a gas station in the early 1930s, and 40 years later, was bought up by the Royal Centre and is now the uninspiring Royal Bank building.

*source: Building the West: early architects of British Columbia

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

 

 

Our Missing Heritage: The buildings along West Georgia Street

by Eve Lazarus on November 8, 2014
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1924 Vancouver streetscape by W.J. Moore

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

I came across this photo* of downtown Vancouver in 1924 while I was playing on Vancouver Archive’s site a few years ago. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was looking at. There’s the Vancouver Block sticking up in the background—you can see the familiar clock—but check out all those other amazing buildings: the Strand Theatre, the Birks Building and the Second Hotel Vancouver—all missing from our streetscape less than half-a-century later.

The hotel was the first to go. Built by the CPR in 1916, you can see some of the incredible detail of the architecture in the photo (above). It even had a trellised outdoor roof café. It was all too grand for Vancouver apparently, because when the third (and existing) Hotel Vancouver was finished, its days were numbered. Eatons bought the site in 1949, pulled down the building and it remained an empty lot for the next two decades. The lot became the Eaton Centre in 1974, then Sears, and now it’s Nordstrom, a US department store.

Across the road from the second Hotel Vancouver was the beautiful old Birks Building. Well not that old really, only 61 in 1974. She was killed off to make way for the Scotia Tower and ugly Vancouver Centre (you know the one with London Drugs on Granville and Georgia).

* CVA Str N201.1

For more posts like this one see: Our Missing Heritage

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

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