Every Place Has a Story

Barr and Anderson: Established 1898

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Barr and Anderson, was a Vancouver company founded in 1898 and the name behind the mechanical work in some of our oldest buildings – a few of which still stand.

Vancouver Club, 915 West Hastings Street, 1914
Founded in 1898:

Back in the 1960s, Doug Archer was an apprentice plumber with Barr and Anderson, a Vancouver company founded in 1898 and the name behind the mechanical work in some of our oldest buildings – a few of which still stand.

Vancouver Sun, May 26, 1928

Recently, Doug sent me photos of eight of the buildings they had worked on. He told me: “One day I was given the job of straightening up the storeroom and I found these old commercial pictures of buildings that they had worked on. I took them home and photographed them onto 35mm slides, then I recently re did them to digital.”

Doug figures the photos were promotional photos taken for the architectural firms that employed Barr and Anderson.

The Vancouver Club opened on January 1, 1914 and is still at 915 West Hastings Street. Designed by Sharp and Thompson, it replaced the first Vancouver Club located on the next lot over.

Union Station, 1917-1965

Union Station was designed by Fred Townley for the Great Northern Railway. It sat next door to our current Pacific Central Station. By the end of the Second World War rail travel was on the decline and the GNR offered the station to the City of Vancouver for use as a museum and library. The city declined and the station was demolished in 1965. It’s been a parking lot ever since.

Manhattan Apartments at Robson and Thurlow, 1908

The Manhattan apartment building at Robson and Thurlow is a familiar site to anyone who spends time in the West End. Designed by Parr and Fee in 1908, the building managed to survive a demolition threat in 1979.

Second Hotel Vancouver, designed by Francis Swale 1916-1949

The second Hotel Vancouver stood at Granville and Georgia Streets, and is the most elegant and ornate building that we ever destroyed. It was pulled down and replaced with a parking lot for a quarter-of-a-century, and it’s now home to the TD Bank Tower and the building that now houses Nordstroms.

Standard Bank Building, 510 West Hastings Street

The regal 15-storey Standard Bank Building has sat at the corner of West Hastings and Richards Streets since it was designed in 1914 by Russell and Babcock architects.

Hudson’s Bay, 674 Granville Street

The Hudson’s Bay building has also managed to survive at the corner of Granville and Georgia Streets. The building was designed by Burke, Horwood and White in 1913.

Birks Building, 1912-1974

The Birks Building went up around the same time as the Bay on the opposite side of Granville and Georgia, but sadly only managed to survive for just over 60 years. Designed by Somervell & Putnam, it was so beloved, that the people of Vancouver held a mock funeral in 1974.

Province Building, 140-142 West Hastings Street

According to Andy Coupland, of the excellent Changing Vancouver blog, the six-storey building in the photo (above) was called the Stock Exchange building, and the Province had offices there for a time. Today, it’s an SRO called Regal Place. The two-storey building next door (140 west Hastings) was the Province’s home from 1903 to 1925, and Andy thinks is most likely the building where Barr and Anderson did their work.

Barr and Anderson also had their own connection to Hastings Street. They had architects Parr and Fee design their building at 112 West Hastings Street in 1902.

Barr and Anderson’s office is still at 112 West Hastings Street. Photo: Historic Places
Sources:

© Eve Lazarus, 2022

Our Missing Heritage: The Stuart Building

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The Stuart Building, ca.1970. Angus McIntyre photo

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

The Stuart Building was a landmark that sat at the southeast corner of Georgia and Chilco Streets, marking the border between the city and Stanley Park from 1909 until its demise in 1982.

View from the tower of the Stuart Building, July 1982. Angus McIntyre photo
Painted Sky Blue:

It didn’t have the elegance of the Birks Building, the grandeur of the second Hotel Vancouver or the presence of the Georgia Medical-Dental Building. It was simply a modest three-storey wood-frame building painted sky blue and capped with a turret.

Stuart Building
Stuart Building shown in 1974 sitting behind a 1948 Brill trolleybus. Angus McIntyre photo.

There was a store that rented bikes and a craft shop on the ground floor and accommodation above, and I imagine it was this simplicity that appealed to the many people who petitioned so hard to try and save it.

Angus McIntyre checks out the turret of the Stuart Building in July 1982. Jim McPherson photo.
Bought by Billionaire:

Macau billionaire Stanley Ho, aka “the King of Gambling” bought the Stuart building and its lot in 1974 for $275,000. Ho offered to upgrade the building and give the city a 30-year lease in exchange for zoning incentives on another property. But in 1982, council members Don Bellamy, Harry Rankin, Bruce Eriksen and Bruce Yorke decided to follow George Puil’s suggestion to “get rid of it once and for all” (Mayor Mike Harcourt, Marguerite Ford and May Brown voted to save it).

Stuart Building is demolished at dawn in July 1982. Angus McIntyre photo
Bulldozed:

Angus photographed the building in the 1970s, and he was there to record its untimely end at dawn one July morning, the earliness of the hour chosen presumably to get there before the protestors. Angus says that, at the time, Chilco was a through Street from Beach Avenue. “The West End had no diverters or barriers or stop signs for that matter. There was a stop sign at Georgia, and it was a legal but dicey left turn to head to the Lion’s Gate Bridge. The cars on Chilco would back up all the way to Beach but were kept moving by a policeman. He also stopped all the traffic to let the trolleybuses turn into and out of Chilco and Georgia.”

The Stuart Building sat at the entrance to Stanley Park. It was demolished in 1982. Photo Courtesy Angus McIntyre

Barb Wood painted the Stuart Building on the cover of a Vancouver centennial engagement calendar in 1986. After witnessing the demolition, she told Jason Vanderhill: “We were told it was too frail to stand, so it should come down. When they drove the first bulldozer through it, the results were like a Bugs Bunny cartoon—the structure was so sound, that the machine left a bulldozer shaped hole, side to side.”

The Stuart Building’s replacement in 2020. Eve Lazarus photo (from Vancouver Exposed)

For more stories like this: Our Missing Heritage and Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

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

Frank Gowen’s Vancouver

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Frank Gowen was born in England in 1877. He moved to Vancouver in 1913 and worked as a photographer until his death in 1946.

Frank Gowen’s photo of 1913 Vancouver. Courtesy Chris Stiles

Chris Stiles kindly sent me this fabulous panoramic photo that she and husband Alan found when they were going through some personal effects of Alan’s father recently.

“My husband’s dad, Roy Stiles was assistant fire chief for the Vancouver Fire Department for many years. He passed in March of 2019, at almost 94 years of age,” she wrote. “I know you love the old houses of Vancouver and there are a number of them visible in this photograph.”

Georgia Street from Hornby, Frank Gowen photo. Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs
Heritage buildings:

I do love old buildings, and Chris has identified quite a few of them:

  • Right foreground building is the Waghorn, Gwynn & Co. Stock Brokers, Real Estate, and Loans. 517 Granville Street
  • The Alcazar Hotel, on Dunsmuir & northeast corner Homer. The back of sign is visible on second building to the left and back of second row of houses.
  • Baker & Co. Signs, 346 Dunsmuir (on the left and behind three houses about in the centre of photograph)
  • To the centre right, behind houses is the North West Biscuit Co. Ltd. at 579 Richards.
  • On the far left edge, midway up the photo is the Van-loo Cigar Factory (formerly The Stettler Cigar Factory) 140 Water Street

And look at how the second Hotel Vancouver just dominates the city’s skyline.

Seaplane crashing through West End roof, 1918. Frank Gowen photo. CVA Air P31
Early Vancouver:

Chris thinks that Roy’s parents Walter and Daisy Stiles bought the panoramic photo from Frank Gowen shortly after he took it in 1913. It would make it one of Gowen’s earliest photos taken soon after he moved to Vancouver.

Walter Stiles worked for BC Electric from 1910 to 1954.

Hollow Tree, Stanley Park. Frank Gowen photo, 1920s. Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs

I went to Frank Gowen’s Vancouver 1914 – 1931 by Fred Thirkell and Bob Scullion to find out more about him. Gowen arrived in Vancouver from Brandon, Manitoba in 1913 and they settled first in Burnaby. While he was establishing himself as a photographer specializing in postcards, he moonlighted as a jitney driver (this was like an early Uber service where people used their private cars to give rides—only back then a trip cost five to 10 cents).

The no longer working Lost Lagoon Fountain. Frank Gowen photo, Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs
Stanley Park Photographer:

In 1916, he became the official Stanley Park photographer and took many of those posed photos that you see outside Hollow Tree and Prospect Point. His postcards sold in the thousands.

There is a great collection of his photos at UBC and the Uno Langmann Collection 

The Grosvenor Hotel, 840 Howe Street (1913-1983). Frank Gowen photo, Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs

Gowen’s range was extensive. He took everything from hotels and ships to piers and beaches, train stations and parks and shot all over British Columbia.

English Bay. Frank Gowen photo, courtesy CVA Be P93

Chris Stiles also has a great family history. Her father, Fritz Autzen was a baker from Germany who ran the Hippocampus on Denman Street in the 1960s. Fritz was also an avid photographer and his story and photos appear in my new book Vancouver Exposed coming this fall.

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

Our Missing Heritage: 18 Lost Buildings of Vancouver

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Originally from Edmonton, Raymond Biesinger is a Montreal-based illustrator whose work regularly appears in the New Yorker, Le Monde and the Guardian. In his spare time, he likes to draw lost buildings. 

In his down-time, Biesinger is drawing his way through nine of Canada’s largest cities. He’s just finished Vancouver, the sixth city in his Lost Buildings series, and his print depicts 18 important heritage buildings that we’ve either bulldozed, burned down or neglected out of existence.

Biesinger uses geometric shapes to ‘build’ his building illustrations

Vancouver’s Lost Buildings:

The lost buildings include iconic ones such as the Georgia Medical-Dental building, the second Hotel Vancouver, and the Birks Building.  It also includes the Stuart Building, the Orillia, Electric House, the Mandarin Garden and Little Mountain–described as “British Columbia’s first and most successful social housing project” (there’s a full list below).

#16 Vancouver Art Gallery (1931-1965) Courtesy CVA 99-4061

Biesinger spent loads of hours researching photos from different online archival sources, as well as local journalists and blogs such as mine.

The Short List:

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of amazing buildings missing from our landscape for Biesinger to choose from. Narrowing down his list was a challenge. He looked for buildings that were socially, architecturally or historically important.

Union Station designed by Fred Townley in 1916. and demolished in 1965. Illustration by Raymond Biesinger

“I tried to get a selection of buildings that had a variety of social purposes—so residences, towers, commercial spaces, athletic spaces, transportation spaces, entertainment and that kind of thing,” he says. “At one point my Vancouver list had mostly theatres on it, because there were so many gorgeous old Vancouver theatres.”

Two of the biggest losses for Vancouver, in Biesinger’s opinion, was the Vancouver Art Gallery’s art deco building on West Georgia and the David Graham House in West Vancouver designed by Arthur Erickson in 1963.

West Coast Modern:

“It just blew my mind that this west coast modern house was demolished in 2007. Someone bought it for the lot and knocked it down so they could put up a McMansion,” he says. “The VAG building from 1931 is incredible. When I found that it was love at first sight. The supreme irony that it was knocked down and is currently a Trump Tower is insane.”

Biesinger has a degree in history from the University of Alberta, and between 2012 and 2016 was at work on a series that showed 10 different Canadian cities during specific points in their history—for example—Montreal at the opening of Expo ’67 and Vancouver during the opening of the Trans-Canada Highway in 1962.

Vancouver in 1962. Courtesy Raymond Biesinger

“What really fascinated me was the buildings that weren’t standing any more, and that people were surprised that existed,” he says.

So how does Vancouver stack up against heritage losses in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary?

​”The worse a city’s record for preserving old buildings, the more enthusiastic people are about these prints,” he said. “Vancouver has done a poor job. I think the economic currents running through Vancouver are just insane and not in favour of preserving the old.”

The Stuart Building sat at the entrance to Stanley Park. It was demolished in 1982. Photo Courtesy Angus McIntyre
The 18 Lost Buildings:

1. Georgia Medical-Dental building (1928-1989)

2. Electric House (1922-2017)

3. The old Courthouse (1888-1912)

4. Little Mountain (1954-2009)

5. Birks Building (1913-1974)

6. Mandarin Garden (1918-1952)

7. The Stuart Building (1909-1982)

8. Vancouver Athletic Club (1906-1946)

9. Pantages Theatre (1907-2011)

10. Union Station (1916-1965)

11. The Orillia (1903-1985)

12. Market Hall (1890-1958)

13. Vancouver Opera House (1891-1969)

14. The second Hotel Vancouver (1916-1949)

15. Ridge Theatre (1950-2013)

16. the Vancouver Art Gallery (1931-1985)

17. Majestic Theatre (1918-1967)

18. David Graham House (1963-2007)

For more posts on Vancouver’s missing heritage:  Our Missing Heritage

Biesinger’s Lost Building posters are $40 and you can order through his website: fifteen.ca 

Related:

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

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

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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 Second Hotel Vancouver (1916-1949)

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Our second Hotel Vancouver opened its doors in 1916 and was the most elegant and ornate building that we have destroyed.

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

second hotel Vancouver
Second Hotel Vancouver ca.1930s. Sat at the corner of Georgia and Granville Streets. Courtesy CVA 770-98

Built in 1916 and pulled down just 33 years later to make way for a parking lot, the second Hotel Vancouver was  a replacement for the original Hotel Vancouver which was built in 1888.

Corner Georgia and Granville Streets
First Hotel Vancouver, CVA Hot N53 , 1898 Granville and Georgia Streets

The new 16-storey version had 700 rooms and was designed in the grand Italianate revival style. The hotel had arched windows, turrets, a roof top garden, and was dressed up with Gargoyles, buffalo heads and terra cotta moose.

Second Hotel VancouverAt the end of the Second World War, homeless veterans took over the hotel, and it became an official barracks for a short time before its demise in 1949 at the tender young age of 33. And, after two decades as a parking lot, the site became home to the uninspiring Pacific Centre mall and the 30-storey black TD Tower which opened in 1972

Related:

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

May 1, 1907: A Trip Across Vancouver

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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. 

Inspector Vance

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.

1907 William Harbeck film
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.

412 Carrall Street
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
related:

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

Our Missing Hotel Heritage: What were we thinking?

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The much lamented—and never should have come down–second Hotel Vancouver should have the number one spot on any much missed heritage building list, but I’d argue that the Devonshire should be a close second. When it comes to hotels, we’ve pulled down a lot of them. Here’s my Top 7 list of downtown hotels missing from our landscape.

Second Hotel Vancouver

1. The Second Hotel Vancouver (1916-1949)

Built in 1916 and pulled down just 33 years later to make way for a parking lot, this was one of the most elegant and ornate buildings we ever destroyed. Its eventual replacement (the former Sears building, Pacific Centre), is to put it mildly, disappointing.

The Devonshire Hotel, West Georgia, CVA LGN 1060 ca.1925
The Devonshire Hotel, West Georgia, CVA LGN 1060 ca.1925

2. The Devonshire (1923-1981)

The Devonshire was originally designed as an apartment building and sat between the Hotel Georgia and the Georgia Medical Dental Building. There’s a great story from 1951 that goes when Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were kicked out of the Hotel Vancouver they walked across the street and were given rooms in the Devonshire. Supposedly Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and the Mills Brothers wouldn’t stay anywhere else.

Glencoe Lodge in 1932 CVA Hot N3
Glencoe Lodge in 1932 CVA Hot N3

3. The Glencoe Lodge (1906-1932)

The Glencoe Lodge (also known as the Hotel Belfred) was built or “assembled” as a residential hotel by sugar baron B.T. Rogers, and as Heather Gordon notes was managed by Jean Mollison, who was known as the “grand Chatelaine.” It sat at the corner of West Georgia and Burrard, and some well known guests included Lord Strathcona, W.H. Malkin, a former mayor and wealthy grocer, and Alvo von Alvensleben.

The Manor House, CVA Bu P 402 1892
The Manor House, CVA Bu P 402 1892

4. Manor House/Badminton Hotel 1889-1936

As noted at Past Tense, the Manor House was one of the earliest buildings constructed west of Granville Street. Designed by William Blackmore, it sat at the southwest corner of Dunsmuir (603 Howe Street). For details see Glen Mofford’s page.

The Hotel Elysium ca.1911 CVA Hot P16
The Hotel Elysium ca.1911 CVA Hot P16

5. Hotel Elysium (1911-1970s)

As Michael Kluckner notes in Vancouver Remembered, when it opened on April Fool’s Day, 1911, the Elysium was a good building built in the wrong part of town. Located at 1140 West Pender, it was converted into suites by C.B.K. Van Norman in 1943 and renamed Park Plaza.

Alcazar Hotel, ca.1955 Jan de Haas photo, courtesy Wiebe de Haas
Alcazar Hotel, ca.1955 Jan de Haas photo, courtesy Wiebe de Haas

6. Alcazar Hotel (1912-1982)

The Alcazar Hotel hung in for 70 years at 337 Dunsmuir, before being taken out in the early 1980s and eventually became the BC Hydro building. According to Changing Vancouver, the Alcazar featured 1940s murals by Jack Shadbolt in the dining room.

790 Howe Street
York Hotel CVA 99-3995, 1931

7. York Hotel (1911-1968)

The York Hotel sat at 790 Howe Street at the corner of Robson. According to Changing Vancouver it was built as an annex for the Hotel Vancouver, and its purpose was to maintain a CPR hotel presence while the second Hotel Vancouver was built. And, yes it was replaced by the Pacific Centre Mall eyesore, which took out so many great heritage buildings.

For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage

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