The Georgia Viaduct knocked out a lot of buildings in 1971 including Hogan’s Alley and Vie’s Chicken and Steakhouse.
Urban Renewal:
The photo (above) was shot in 1971 and appears in Sensational Vancouver’s Walk on the Wild Side chapter to illustrate “urban renewal”—the City of Vancouver’s excuse for trying to demolish Strathcona and Chinatown.
It’s also one of the few photos that I’ve been able to find that shows that corner of Main and Union Street.
Vancouver Archives allows you to zoom into the photo which I’ve done in the inset. The building on the corner is still there. The little building next door at 207 Union (recently re-numbered 209) now houses the Jimi Hendrix shrine. Before it was levelled into a parking lot and later turned into an extension of the shrine—the real 209 Union Street had a fascinating history.
Mattlo’s Bootlegging Joint:
In 1937 the house was Louis Mattlo’s bootlegging joint. There’s a great photo in the Vancouver Sun showing Mattlo arrested and hauled off to jail after trying to break into his padlocked house with a screwdriver.
A city magistrate had come up with an innovative idea of ordering police to padlock three of the homes of the most notorious bootleggers. Unfortunately, police had locked in the Mattlo family’s tabby and had to go back in to rescue the cat. And what they didn’t bank on, was that the families would elect to stay inside the padlocked homes.
Uniformed officers were posted outside each of the homes to help facilitate the departure of the family members should they change their mind. It took over two weeks.
In the late 1940s, the house became Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, a famous Hogan Alley landmark operated by Vie and Robert Moore for more than 30 years.
Vie’s became a favourite destination for visiting black performers including Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. Local legend has it that Nora Hendrix worked at Vie’s and that her grandson, rocker Jimi Hendrix played there.
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