Sensational Vancouver

The incredible photography of Selwyn Pullan

by Eve Lazarus on August 16, 2014

Selwyn Pullan, photographer — Selwyn Pullan in his studio, 2008. Kenneth Dyck photo

I’ve been posting pictures of the BC Electric Building on Facebook this week, but I haven’t posted this one—it’s on the back of Sensational Vancouver and in the chapter on West Coast Modern. The photo was shot by Selwyn Pullan in 1957, the same year BC Electric completed this ground breaking piece of architecture.

While Ned Pratt and Ron Thom were designing the BC Electric building and other west coast modern architects such as Arthur western living 1961 Erickson and Barry Downs were producing buildings full of glass and angles and natural materials built to expand into spaces in ways unseen before, it was Selwyn Pullan who captured their vision.

Selwyn studied under Ansel Adams at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, and after moving back to Vancouver he became a sought after commercial photographer, working for magazines such as Western Homes and Living, Macleans and Architectural Digest.

“I just look at the house and photograph it,” he told me. “I don’t have any preconceptions when I photograph, it’s a journalistic assignment not a photographic one.”

Many of Selwyn’s photos are in my book, and so is he. He’s over 90 now and still living in the North Vancouver house he bought in 1952. Pullan asked Fred Hollingsworth to design a carport. The finished structure looks more like a plane than a garage, and that’s interesting not just from an architectural point of view, but because he and Hollingsworth used to make model airplanes together as teens. Pullan says Hollingsworth still does.

Selwyn Pullan's studio. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1960 — Selwyn Pullan’s studio. Selwyn Pullan photo, 1960

In 1960 when Pullan needed a multi-purpose studio and darkroom for his growing photographing business, he sought out Hollingsworth again. Rather then add another room to the house, the architect created a covered passageway that led from the house and flowed down the slope of the property. He designed a two-level studio with floor-to-ceiling windows and concrete floors that blend seamlessly with the landscape.It was here in 1969 that Selwyn shot the paintings for Lawren Harris’s book, from the artist’s early days with the Group of Seven through to his abstract period in Vancouver. Selwyn refused to shoot them anywhere except his studio and only when he was alone. The paintings would be trucked to his studio in batches, taken away and a new group brought in. Harris, who lived on ritzy Belmont Avenue in Vancouver, died the following year. Cover image by DRK Design. To see more of his work, see Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Mid-Century West Coast Modern, Douglas & McIntyre, 2012.

Tags Ansel Adams, Architectural Digest, Art Center School, Arthur Erickson, Barry Downs, BC Electric, Fred Hollingsworth, Lawren Harris, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Selwyn Pullan, Sensational Vancouver, Western Homes and Living

Mug-Shot Books and the Vancouver Police Museum

by Eve Lazarus on August 9, 2014

Vancouver Police Museum, 240 East Cordova — The Vancouver Police Museum is in the old Coroner’s Court and Morgue

I am thrilled to have the book launch for Sensational Vancouver at the Vancouver Police Museum on Tuesday. The Museum is housed in the old coroner’s court and morgue on Cordova which makes an authentic backdrop for all the great displays.

A large chunk of the material for my book came straight from the Museum’s archives.

One of my favourite “finds” was the prisoner record books. These are huge, heavy leather-bound books full of mug shots of the desperate and the unlucky. The brief, hand-written entries tell whole stories about people’s lives and deaths.

Courtesy of the Vancouver Police Museum

For instance, there is poor Walter Pretsel, 25, who came to the police station in 1912 to ask for a job as a stenographer. “He was found to be insane and was later committed to the insane asylum.” It doesn’t say why.

There are dozens of “notorious gamblers” and prostitution is listed as a profession.

Other entries are just bizarre.

Burnette F. Davis, 28, was a school principal in Washington D.C. He married one of his students, 17-year-old Christine Verhorick, brought her to Vancouver and put her to work at Dolly Darlington’s brothel on Alexander Street. He got five years and a $2,000 fine. It doesn’t say what happened to Christine, but it notes that it’s the second time Burnette had tried this. In 1907 he married a Miss Wade from Kent, Washington. She wasn’t as lucky as Christine. She died and was buried with the “aid of inmates.”

Mug-Shot Books aFrom the archives at the Vancouver Police Museum — Prisoner Record Books 1912

Then there’s little Annie Smith aged 38. Annie, alias Mrs. Stanfield was a bigamist from England. She told police that she believed that her husband, Mr. Smith was dead. She answered a personal ad in a Spokane newspaper, and through the ad, met and married Mr. Stanfield in 1909. She divorced him under grounds of cruelty and fled to Vancouver with her two small children. Stanfield somehow found Smith, who was in fact not dead, and the two men went to police in Vancouver. Annie was found “technically guilty,” but given a suspended sentence, we’re told “on account of the troubles and suffering she had endured.”

Tags Annie Smith, Annie Stanfield, Burnette F. Davis, Christine Verhorick, Dolly Darlington, Mug shots, Prisoner Record Books, Sensational Vancouver, Vancouver Police Museum, Walter Pretsel

Mayor Gerry McGeer’s $20 Million Tear-Down

by Eve Lazarus on August 2, 2014

Mayor Gerry McGeer lived at 4812 Belmont Avenue in Point Grey between 1927 and his death there in 1947. At around 10:00 pm on June 17, 2022 the house burned to the ground. It was unoccupied and apparently under renovation after not getting a demolition permit.

What will $20 million buy you in Vancouver? Mayor Gerry McGeer's former West Side digs. — What will $20 million buy you in Vancouver? Mayor Gerry McGeer’s former West Side digs.

Sixth most expensive listing:

As of August 2014, the property at 4812 Belmont is apparently the 6^th most expensive listing in Vancouver. I’m not surprised—it’s a street that’s always attracted big money. According to the listing it’s a “great investment property” with a killer view and over 8,200 sq.ft. of living area including six bedrooms and a conservatory. The listing suggests that new owners either renovate the 1920 property or “build” their own “dream residence.” (The listing shows the view, not the house).

What the listing doesn’t mention is that one of our most colourful Mayors—Gerry McGeer lived in the house from 1927 to his death while still in office in 1947.

As I wrote in Sensational Vancouver, McGeer was a lawyer and later a Member of Parliament, Senator and Member of the Provincial Legislative Assembly. He ran against L.D. Taylor for Mayor in 1934 and won. He’s remembered for reading the Riot Act to a bunch of unemployed men at Victory Square the following year.

Mayor Gerry McGeer:

McGeer pushed for the new site of City Hall at its current Mount Pleasant location and raised much of the $1.5 million through Baby Bonds. In a pitch to investors in June 1935, McGeer told the Vancouver Sun: “Work and wages mean better times and prosperity, and is the correct answer to Communism. In raising $1.5 million for a City Hall, sewers, parks, and lanes, we are providing work and wages…to improve your city.”

McGeer and his wife Charl, daughter of department store magnate David Spencer, paid $25,000 for the house. He parked his Stutz Bearcat—a black, long, low and sleek four-door car with windows made of shatterproof glass in the new garage.

McGeer was a notorious drinker and was said to stash his whiskey in the garden.

McGeer ran again and was elected in 1946.

According to a 1986 biography, Mayor Gerry, McGeer’s daughter Pat recalls that the 59-year-old Mayor had come in to her bedroom to say good night and talk about his recent trip. He reached for a large bottle of eau-de-cologne on her dresser and downed it in one swig. The next morning McGeer’s chauffeur found him dressed in pajamas lying dead on the couch in his Belmont Street study.

Cause of death was massive heart failure.

Tags 4812 Belmont, Charl Spencer, David Spencer, L.D. Taylor, Mayor Gerry McGeer, Sensational Vancouver, Vancouver City Hall

West Coast Modern and Architect Barry Downs

by Eve Lazarus on July 5, 2014

Barry Downs architect designed his gorgeous West Coast Modern house in West Vancouver in 1979. He lived there until his death in July 2022 at 92.

From Sensational Vancouver

Barry Downs and the West Coast modern house he designed in 1979

Barry Downs house sits on top of a cliff 120 feet above West Vancouver’s Garrow Bay. The house is almost invisible from the busy street and built on multiple levels, with lots of glass that connects the indoors with the out.

Rapidly disappearing:

Most people don’t think of these gorgeous mid-century homes as “heritage,” but many are listed on the Heritage Register. Because they are typically small houses on large view lots, they are rapidly disappearing.

Barry figures we’ve lost about 50 percent of our mid-century housing stock.

Each step through the Downs’ house is like a journey of discovery. A window in the bathroom looks out onto the forest. Another window gives a view of Bowen Island, and another a glimpse of the rocky exterior. But it’s not until you step into the dining room that you can truly understand the brilliance of Barry’s design. The Strait of Georgia, Vancouver Island and the B.C. Coast line leaps out through floor to ceiling glass windows, and just for a moment it’s disorienting, like being suspended in space.

Marine Drive, West Vancouver. Barry Downs photo

Focus on the landscape:

“To me, it’s all to do with emotion, and you derive that from the building and its setting,” says Barry. “The focus for me has always been the landscape, the garden, the seasonal world.”

Barry trained at Thompson, Berwick and Pratt and worked with some of the city’s most exciting and imaginative architects. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick and B.C. Binning, at one time all worked under the guidance of Ned Pratt. Barry left to form a partnership with Fred Hollingsworth in 1963, and six years later he and Richard Archambault launched their own company with residential houses as their mainstay.

Barry Downs architect

“We built on narrow lots with simple and affordable post and beam houses. We designed houses that pushed up through the trees, that revolved around the idea of the big room, surrounded by the garden, and the view of the changing seasons,” he says.

Barry, a softly spoken man now in his 80s, is as low key as the houses that he designs. He’d just like to see more of them remain.

Tags Arthur Erickson, B.C. Binning, Barry Downs, Berwick Pratt, Fred Hollingsworth, Paul Merrick, Richard Archambault, Ron Thom, Sensational Vancouver, Thompson, West Vancouver Museum

From Vancouver City Hall to Bryan Adams’ Recording Studio: repurposing old buildings

by Eve Lazarus on May 31, 2014

Powell and Columbia Streets — Oppenheimer Bros Wholesale Grocers building 1898

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

Bryan Adams has collected a ton of hardware over the years, but the one I find the most interesting is the City of Vancouver Heritage Award he was given in 1998 for transforming a derelict Gastown warehouse into a world class recording studio.

Bryan Adams When Adams bought the brick building at the corner of Powell and Columbia Streets in 1991 it was abandoned and abused. Likely it would have gone the way of other historical Gastown buildings if he hadn’t seen its potential.

The building restoration took seven years and cost $5 million including the purchase price. The three-storey building has large windows to let in lots of natural light, a massive main studio on the second floor and a mixing suite on the third floor.

“I always leaned toward having a studio in an eccentric neighborhood,” Adams told Mix. “It reminds me a little of New York.”

The Victorian-style warehouse is the oldest brick building in the city. Built by David Oppenheimer, a German immigrant and Vancouver’s second Mayor (1888-1891) the building survived the Great Fire of 1886 and served as the Oppenheimer Brother’s growing wholesale grocery business.

The warehouse also served as Vancouver City Hall while Oppenheimer was mayor.

Today it hosts bands and rock stars that include AC/DC, Elton John, Bon Jovie, Tragically Hip, Metallica and Michael Bublé.

100 Powell Street

Tags Bryan Adams, City of Vancouver, City of Vancouver Heritage Award, David Oppenheimer, Sensational Vancouver, the Warehouse

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