Tom Carter

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

What the Alhambra Theatre and the Vancouver Stock Exchange have in common

by Eve Lazarus on June 13, 2015

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

I was spending a typical Friday afternoon yesterday poking around the digital files at Vancouver Archives when I found this photo of the Alhambra Theatre. The photo was taken in 1899, the year the theatre first appears in the city directories and it stood at the corner of West Pender and Howe Street.

West Pender and Howe Streets — Alhambra Theatre, 850 West Pender Street, 1899 CVA Bu N424

While I often run posts lamenting the loss of our old building stock, I do realize that change is inevitable, and all of it isn’t bad. I wanted to know what had replaced this old theatre.

The Royal Theatre at West Pender and Howe Street — 1902 Tourist Guide map showing the Royal Theatre courtesy Tom Carter

The Alhambra Theatre didn’t last long. By 1901 it was the Royal, and two years later the People’s Theatre. Tom Carter*, who is the expert on anything and everything that’s theatre in Vancouver, tells me that Vaudeville magnates Sullivan and Considine performed a huge renovation and turned it into the Orpheum in 1906. The theatre lasted at 805 West Pender until, according to Tom, its owners rebuilt the Vancouver Opera House into the second Orpheum Theatre in 1913 (the current Orpheum Theatre was built in 1927).

850 West Pender Street — People’s Theatre 1903

In 1914, the West Pender building is listed in the directories as the “old Orpheum Theatre” and (possibly because it’s now the war years) it doesn’t get a mention again until 1917 when it becomes a tire-dealership. The building then hosts a couple of different taxi companies, and at one point the Sing Lung Laundry.

By 1929 the building has been replaced by the eleven-storey neo-gothic Stock Exchange, its address changes to Howe; and it becomes the home of the Vancouver Stock Exchange until 1947.

West Pender and Howe Street — Stock Exchange Tower, 475 Howe Street, 1929 CVA 1399-600

It’s a valuable piece of real estate in development hungry Vancouver, and its zoned for a much higher tower. But instead of knocking down this old gem as we’re prone to do, Credit Suisse, a Swiss company has stepped in with the Starchitect behind the restoration of London’s Tate Modern gallery, to incorporate the old building into the design for the new.

The new building will be a 31-storey office tower and the ground floor will be retail.

It’s an impressive looking building, a win for heritage, and a nod to the original architects—Townley and Matheson, the same two who designed Vancouver City Hall in 1936.

*For more on Vancouver’s theatre check out Tom Carter’s chapter in Vancouver Confidential: “Nightclub Czars of Vancouver and the Death of Vaudeville.”

* For more on our missing theatres: Our Missing Theatre Heritage – what were we thinking?

Tags 475 Howe Street, 850 West Pender Street, Alhambra Theatre, building, Credit Suisse, Orpheum Theatre, People's Theatre, Royal Theatre, Sing Lung Laundry, Stock Exchange, Sullivan and Considine, the Exchange, Tom Carter, Townley and Matheson, Vancouver Archives, Vancouver City Hall, Vancouver Confidential, Vancouver Stock Exchange

Our missing West End residential heritage: What were we thinking?

by Eve Lazarus on April 25, 2015

For more stories like this one see Vancouver Exposed: Searching for this city’s hidden history Westend in the 50s Tom

I was trekking around the West End with artist and historian Tom Carter on Tuesday. I found some pictures of gorgeous old West End houses at the archives and I wanted to see what replaced them.

Tom had some aerial photos of the West End taken in the ‘50s that showed masses of houses, low rise apartment buildings and lots of trees, built in the late 1880s and early 20^th century, before Shaughnessy opened up and the West End was still a desirable place to live.

Many of the old mansions became apartment buildings and rooming houses, and when the six-storey height limit was removed in the late 1950s, most of these old houses and their beautiful gardens disappeared in a frenzy of demolition.

1201 Pendrell

The house first shows up in the directories in 1906, built for Duncan Rowan who is listed simply as “cannery man.” Duncan died a few years later and the house sold to the Buttimer family where it stayed until1930. When this photo was taken in 1956 it was an apartment building called The Pillars.

Here’s what we’ve done with the lot:

1221 Burnaby

Built for George Coleman in 1901, directories show that at one time it was the Convent of the Sacred Heart and later a school called the Vancouver Academy. The house became an apartment building called Wootton Manor in the 1940s.

This is Wootton Manor’s replacement:

Wootton manor replacement

1185 Harwood

Well, at least the stone fence is still there. The house was once surrounded by other old mansions and built for Alex Morrison, a contractor. It stayed in the family until 1930 and became the Margaret Convalescent and Nursing home during the war years.

1025 Gilford

Thomas Fee house — 1025 Gilford, VPL 16134, ca.1910

Architect Thomas Fee designed this house for his family in 1907 because Mrs. Fee wanted a house in the country. Fee was part of Parr and Fee a prolific architectural firm that designed numerous buildings such as Glen Brae in Shaughnessy, The Manhattan apartments on Robson, the Hotel Europe in Gastown and the Vancouver Block. The house became the Park Gilford Hotel in the late 1940s. It came down in 1961.

All that remains is a few holly trees.

fee today

For more about the West End:

The Last of the West End Mansions
The West End Guest House: one of the last ones standing
The Former Houses of Beach Avenue
The Life and Death of the Englesea Lodge
Our Missing Heritage
For more stories like this one see Vancouver Exposed: Searching for this city’s hidden history

The Orpheum Theatre and a conversation with Paul Merrick

by Eve Lazarus on August 23, 2014

Dan Rickard photo. www.danrickard.ca

Dan Rickard photography

A couple of weeks ago, Judy Graves, Tom Carter and I took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Orpheum Theatre.

The “new” Orpheum was designed in 1927 by Marcus Priteca, a Seattle-based architect who fashioned the theatre in a Spanish renaissance style and gave it an opulent air with some sleight of hand tricks.

For instance, if you tap on a colonnade it’s hollow, made from precast plaster. The ornate Baroque ceiling is made from plaster and chicken wire.

Priteca introduced a range of different influences including Italian-inspired terrazzo floors and travertine walls, crests of British heraldry and 145 Czechoslovakian crystal chandeliers.

We got to climb up on a catwalk way above the domed ceiling, visit the projection booth—and we went up on the stage—the same one where Jack Benny and W.C. Fields once performed.

Tom played the original organ.

I didn’t realize how close we came to losing the theatre. In 1973 Famous Players wanted to replace the Orpheum with a Multiplex cinema and it sparked off what was probably the biggest heritage protest in Vancouver’s history. City Hall received 8,000 letters from angry citizens and petitions with thousands of signatures. Ivan Ackery, the Orpheum’s long-time manager bounced back from retirement and joined impresario Hugh Pickett to stage a benefit concert.

The City bought the Orpheum for $3.9 million and poured another $3.2 million into a renovation by Paul Merrick, the same architect who designed Cathedral Place, renovated the Marine Building and converted the BC Electric building into the Electra.

“The Orpheum is a good example of a building that has begged, borrowed and stolen characteristics from all over the world,” Merrick told me. “There’s a dozen different styles going on top of each other, from Spanish to late Edwardian to who knows what, it was just a case of playing some more with it.”

Merrick said the Orpheum was one of “the earliest large adaptive reuse projects” and was more extensive then it appears because the whole of the Vaudeville stage entrance was taken out and redone using a larger version of Priteca’s original design to accommodate a 100-plus orchestra.

“Adapting buildings involves paying all the respect and every respect you can to what it is and what it was and why it’s worth taking trouble with, but that doesn’t mean being stultified or precious about it,” he said. “The focus of architecture is to make a building and when it’s all said and done, buildings need to be objects of utility, to service the people’s uses and needs inside them. They are there to provide shelter, but they are also concerned with affording delight. I always thought if you could make pieces of the city—which is all a building is just another piece of the city—if we can make an environment that we’re happy to leave to our descendants, then that’s as good as you can do.”

Tags Cathedral Place, Hugh Pickett, Ivan Ackery, Jack Benny, Judy Graves, Marcus Priteca, Marine Building, Orpheum Theatre, Paul Merrick, Tom Carter, W.C. Fields

Exploring the DTES – Main Street Barber Shop

by Eve Lazarus on May 3, 2014

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get in on a tour exploring several DTES buildings with Judy Graves, Tom Carter and John Atkin. Judy spent decades advocating for the homeless, and this is her stamping ground. Tom lives and paints from his downtown loft, and John lives in Strathcona, so I’m the only one from the ‘burbs (and with a driver’s licence as it turns out.)

Originally the Carnegie Library built in 1901 — Carnegie Community Centre at Main and East Hastings

We started at the Carnegie Community Centre, which is an amazing place that I’ve driven past thousands of times, but never ventured inside. I fell in love with Ken Clarke’s sculptures that are on display there. Ken is one of the artists that works out of the Hungry Thumbs Studio, housed at 233 Main Street, between a couple of rooming houses with reputations as former brothels and crack joints. The building has 10 of Ken’s gargoyle-like heads lined up above the door.

Jeff Burnette, a glass blower, gave us a tour of the studio. Jeff has a huge collection of toy ray guns, which makes sense when you see his art—dozens and dozens of brightly coloured glass ray guns. There are artists working in neon, in clay, cement and plaster. Downstairs are the incredible mosaics and stained glass works of Bruce Walther.

But what was really fascinating was the building’s history.

233 Main Street — Barber shop mirror still intact 70-odd years after the last haircut

Number 233 Main first appears in the city directories in 1913, the offices of A.M. Asancheyev, real estate agent. Most of the store operators along Main (which changed its name from Westminster Avenue in 1910) were Japanese, and the downstairs was occupied by a series of barbers over the years.

Long before it housed mosaics and signage, the space was a barber shop and bath house. Although about seven decades have gone by since it was used for that purpose, the white tiled floors are still intact, the barber shop mirror is still there and remnants of the bath house remain.

For more on the DTES

The Regent Hotel

The Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret

Tags 233 Main Street, Bruce Walther, Carnegie Community Centre, DTES, Hungry Thumbs Studio, Jeff Burnette, John Atkin, Judy Graves, Ken Clarke, Tom Carter

Meet Tom Carter Artist

by Eve Lazarus on January 8, 2014

Tom Carter is a Vancouver-based artist known for exploring the city’s gritty urban environments.

by Tom Carter — Harry Carter–Tom’s grandfather outside his East Hastings Street cafe in the 1930s

Heritage Loft:

I visited Tom Carter in his heritage loft a couple of weeks ago. It was the same afternoon that we climbed up to the top of the Sun Tower, in what was in 1912, the tallest building in the British Empire. Tom lives next door in a 100-year-old converted warehouse designed for Storey & Campbell Limited by William Tuff Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower for Mayor L.D. Taylor.

His loft looks out onto Pender Street and its floor to ceiling windows give a great view of Victory Square and some of the building stock we’ve managed to hang onto such as the Dominion and the Standard Buildings. The brick walls of the loft make a fitting background for Tom’s paintings of Vancouver’s street scenes and heritage buildings—many now long gone.

"Night falls over the City of Vancouver" by Tom Carter — “Night falls over the City of Vancouver” by Tom Carter

Missing Heritage:

Tom is fascinated by Vancouver’s early theatre industry and has an amazing collection of photographs, books and even some of the original plaster that he managed to salvage on his daily trips to the Pantages Theatre during its destruction two years ago.

Before he starting painting, Tom lived the rock and roll dream. He co-owned and managed a recording studio in Surrey working with artists like Long John Baldry, and members of Chilliwack and Trooper. Tom played keyboard on a lot of the albums, and his beautiful concert grand takes up a prominent position in his loft.

Tom at home with "Warmth at the edge of wilderness" — Tom at home with “Warmth at the edge of wilderness”

Music:

“We did blues albums that were nominated for Juno awards, a lot of roots rock,” says Tom. “I loved it, it was a lot of fun, but then it got to the point it just wasn’t fun anymore.”

Tom bought the loft in 2003, turned 40, stopped drinking, and dabbled in real estate.

“I found myself sitting in this place, I was unemployed, and I didn’t have a clue how I was going to make the next mortgage payment.”

Then he started to research his family history and had a kind of epiphany.

Tom Carter is a Vancouver artist — Plaster from the Pantages Theatre saved from the landfill

“I realized my grandfather was the same age—39—when he moved to Vancouver from the Prairies,” says Tom. “I knew his life from the early 40s on because he had businesses in the Okanagan, he was mayor of Oliver, but I didn’t know much about this transition period, and I was going through the same transition.”

Vancouver Cafe:

Tom learned that his grandfather had owned the Vancouver Cafe and Grill next to the Balmoral Hotel on East Hastings. His father told him about the bombing of the Royal Theatre across the street in 1933, and how a piece of the Royal had smashed into his restaurant.

Tom hit Special Collections at the Vancouver Public Library and the Vancouver Archives and searched through old newspaper articles and photos from the ‘30s and ‘40s. The stories melded with his own memories as a kid in the ‘60s coming into the city to see films at the Orpheum and the Strand.

Tom Carter painting

“There was still Woodwards downtown, we still had the PNE parade—all those Vancouver institutions that are gone now,” he says. “I was trying to find a style—something I really want to paint.”

Tom sold his first painting at a small gallery in West Vancouver for $900, his second for $1,250 and his third for $13,500. Now his sought-after paintings hang on boardroom walls and in private collections all over the city.

Tags 518 Beatty Street, Balmoral Hotel, Chilliwack, Dominion Building, Harry Carter, L.D. Taylor, Long John Baldry, Standard Building, Storey and Campbell, Sun Tower, Tom Carter, Trooper, Vancouver Cafe and Grill, William Tuff Whiteway

The Sun Tower: On Top of the World

by Eve Lazarus on December 28, 2013

A couple of weeks ago my friend Tom Carter and I climbed to the top of the Sun Tower, one of my favourite buildings in Vancouver.

Sun Tower cupola

It’s also one of our most familiar landmarks, and at one time the tallest building in the British Empire when mayor, L.D. Taylor had it built over a century ago to house his newspaper—the Vancouver World.

100 West Pender Street

The building has a unique L shape with eight stories that runs along West Pender and Beatty Streets, topped by a nine-storey tower, capped by a Beaux-arts dome and cupola.

View from the Cupola:

We took the lift to the 17^th floor, climbed up a couple of flights of stairs into the dome, and then up a ladder to the cupola. Even with all the high-rises that have popped up around to overshadow it, the view from the cupola is breathtaking.

100 West Pender Street — The building’s elevator machinery is housed inside the dome. Eve Lazarus photo

One of the biggest misconceptions about the Sun Tower is its copper roof. Turns out it’s not copper at all, just concrete painted green.

Sculptures by Charles Marega:

Designed by William Tuff Whiteway in 1911, details include a marble staircase and nine topless maidens created by Charles Marega, who also sculpted the two lions at the Stanley Park end of the Lions Gate Bridge, the George Vancouver statue at City Hall and the Joe Fortes Memorial Fountain at English Bay. The “caryatids” support a cornice line halfway up the building, and so shocked the city’s elite they hindered leasing of the building.

LD Taylor still holds the record as the most elected mayor in the City of Vancouver. He won nine elections, lost seven, and served eight terms between 1910 and 1934. He looks like a nerdy little man in his trademark red tie and owlish glasses, but he was actually a flamboyant risk taker. In 1905, he bought the World, one of four daily newspapers in Vancouver, from Sara McLagan, the sister of noted architect Samuel Maclure, and rode the real estate boom so that The World carried the most display advertising of any daily in North America.

The newspaper was a huge success for LD, but his mega building couldn’t withstand the crash of 1913 and LD sold after only three years.

The Human Fly:

In 1918, the building attracted masses to watch Harry Gardiner “the human fly” scale the tower and climb through one of the top floor windows.

For a time the building was owned by Bekins, a Seattle-based moving company, and in 1937, became home to the Vancouver Sun for the next three decades. Laura Anderson tells me that Artists E.J. Hughes, Paul Goranson and Orville Fisher once had a studio in the tower, and Sun photographers set up a lair in the dome, but today, instead of the clattering of typewriters in the offices and the rumbling of presses, the basement holds a sleek new gym.

Meet Tom Carter

Tags 100 West Pender Street, 500 Beatty Street, Bekins, Charles Marega, Harry Gardiner, L.D. Taylor, Samuel Maclure, Sara McLagan, the Sun Tower, The Vancouver World, Tom Carter, William Tuff Whiteway

Heritage Streeters with Anne Banner, Tom Carter, Kerry Gold and Anthony Norfolk

What the Alhambra Theatre and the Vancouver Stock Exchange have in common

Our missing West End residential heritage: What were we thinking?

The Orpheum Theatre and a conversation with Paul Merrick

Exploring the DTES – Main Street Barber Shop

Meet Tom Carter Artist

Heritage Loft:

Missing Heritage:

Music:

Vancouver Cafe:

RElated:

The Sun Tower: On Top of the World

View from the Cupola:

Sculptures by Charles Marega:

The Human Fly:

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