William T. Whiteway

Fire takes out King Edward High School

by Eve Lazarus on June 18, 2022

On June 19, 1973, a three-alarm fire broke out at the old King Edward High School at West 12th and Oak Street. The building was destroyed, but remnants remain on the old site, now part of Vancouver General Hospital.

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

Designed by William T. Whiteway:

William T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower, designed the school in the neoclassical style and topped it off with a central cupola. It was the first secondary school built south of False Creek, opened in 1905 and was officially renamed King Edward five years later.

King Edward High — Courtesy Andrea Nicholson

Impressive Alumni:

The list of King Ed alumni includes an impressive array of Vancouver luminaries. There is philanthropist Cecil Green and broadcasters Jack Cullen and Red Robinson. Other notables to pass through the school’s corridors are Dal Grauer, president and chair of BC Power Corporation and BC Electric; Nathan Nemetz, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of BC; Grace McCarthy, politican; Yvonne De Carlo, actor; Jack Wasserman, newspaper reporter; Jamie Reid, poet; educator Dr Annie B. Jamieson and Olympic athlete Percy Williams.

The King Ed track team in 1926. Percy in the middle row, third from left. Courtesy Andrea Nicholson.

In 1962 King Ed became an adult education centre and the kids transitioned to Eric Hamber, says Andrea Nicholson, alumni coordinator. Vancouver City College took over the King Ed building in 1965. David Byrnes attended first-year university there in the late 1960s. “One day when we were goofing around my friend Malcolm told me he’d found a way into the attic,” says David. “I remember climbing up to look out the cupola and finding a rifle range.”

Taught Shooting:

Andrea confirms there was a rifle range and students from Cecil Rhodes and Henry Hudson elementary schools used to train there. Andrea’s mum Elizabeth (MacLaine) Lowe taught at the school and later became department head for business education. She was supposed to teach night school on the day the school burned down. “I remember as a child going up into the turret, and I remember when they pulled that school apart the dividers for the bathroom stalls were solid marble,” says Andrea, who could see the flames from the grounds of Cecil Rhodes Elementary at 14^th and Spruce.

Building Sold:

Vancouver General Hospital bought the King Edward building and land in 1970, though it remained an educational institution until the fire. Now, all that’s left is the stone wall at Oak and West 12^th Avenue, a stained-glass window installed in Vancouver Community College’s Broadway campus, and, in the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre that replaced the school, there is a plaque, a large photograph of the original school and a circle of yellow tile in the lobby outlining the original King Ed High School.

King Ed Plaque

The wall received a Places that Matter plaque in 2012. Former King Ed teacher, and vice-president Annie B. Jamieson (1907-1927) had an elementary school named after her.

Tags Andrea Nicholson, Annie B. Jamieson, Cecil Green, Dal Grauer, Elizabeth Lowe, Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre, Grace McCarthy, Jack Cullen, Jack Wasserman, King Edward High School, Nathan |Nemetz, Percy Williams, Red Robinson, Vancouver Community College, Vancouver General Hospital, William T. Whiteway, Yvonne de Carlo

Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Most Endangered Heritage Resources of 2016

by Eve Lazarus on May 7, 2016

Bayview Community School (1913-1914) tops the 2016 list

Heritage Vancouver hosted its 16th annual bus tour today, taking people to the buildings, streets and landscapes that the Society believes have the most perilous survival rate. And, it’s not just the mansions—but also schools, churches, streets, and areas—all the things that make a community rich.
Not all the buildings are that old either. There’s the 1978 Crown Life Plaza, St. Stephen’s United Church built in 1964, and the 65-year-old art deco Salvation Army Temple.
HV townley

The 63 remaining Townley & Matheson homes claim a spot—represented by 1550 West 29th, built in 1922 to showcase the use of electricity and which Heritage Vancouver calls “demolition derby.”
Chinatown and Commercial Drive also make the list, as does the Red Light District of Alexander Street, one of the most interesting of all, and an area I studied extensively for Sensational Vancouver.
HV 500 alexander

In 1913, Chief Rufus Chamberlin wrote in a report called “Social Evil” that “there is no restricted district in the City of Vancouver at this time.”
Clearly no one had told the dozen or so madams who had either renovated existing buildings or built luxurious and expensive brothels along Alexander Street. In 1912, a time when there were few opportunities for women, brothel keeping was an attractive proposition. Dolly Darlington bought a sturdy brick building at the corner of Alexander and Jackson. The one at #504 was designed for Kathryn Maynard by William T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower, while Alice Bernard hired Woolridge and McMullen architects to design and build a two-storey brick rooming house.
These three buildings still exist, as do three others in the 600-block.
HV marie

Others, such as the ones owned by Fay Packard and Marie Gomez’s House of Nations, named for her multi-cultural employees, are long gone.
The lists and the tours are certainly raising awareness, but I was curious whether they are actually working. Heritage Vancouver’s Patrick Gunn says past wins include Carleton Hall Arthur Erickson’s 1980 Evergreen building, but otherwise it’s hit and miss.
He sent me this list from the first tour in 2001 as an illustration:
1.Firehall 13 & 15: one lost, one saved
2. James Shaw House (1894): saved and restored
3. Alexandra Park Cottages: lost
4. VGH Heather Pavilion: ongoing
5. Opsal Steel (1918): saved
6. BC Electric Showroom (1928): saved
7. Pantages Theatre (1907): lost
8. Stanley Park structures: various stages
9. 100-block West Hastings, Ralph Block (1899): saved
10. Ridley House (1911): lost, illegal demolition

Tags Alice Bernard, Arthur Erickson, Crown Life Plaza, Dolly Darlington, Fay Packard, Heritage Vancouver, Kathryn Maynard, Marie Gomez, Patrick Gunn, Rufus Chamberin, Salvation Army Temple, St. Stephen's United Church, Sun Tower, Townley & Matheson, William T. Whiteway, Woolridge and McMullen

Red Light Rendezvous at the Vancouver Police Museum

by Eve Lazarus on May 30, 2015

Frankie Russell, 1912 inmate of disorderly house

The Vancouver Police Museum has put together Red Light Rendezvous—a new tour for those of us who can’t get enough of the gritty history of downtown Vancouver.

Cat Rose, who is a crime analyst by day, is also the person behind the Police Museum’s other popular Sins of the City tour: Vice, Dice and Opium Pipes.

Cat has access to the Museum’s records which include arrests by the morality squad in the 1920s. She put these records to good use on the tour, finding (with some help from John Atkin), a still-standing brothel on Dupont (now Pender) once owned by Dora Reno. Dora was one of Vancouver’s earliest madams. She appears in Sensational Vancouver’s “The Social Evil” chapter, and when Dora was charged with vagrancy for illegally profiting from her ownership of a brothel, she hired future Attorney General William Bowser to get her off.

Cat’s tour meanders down Main Street, stops at where the red light district moved to Harris Street (East Georgia) in 1906, and which generated a Province headline of that year: “Conditions in Restricted District are worst in city’s history: innocent youths invited into lowest dives. Officials are shocked.”

Prostitution played an important role in the life in Vancouver, as it did in every port city. When city coffers were low, madams were hauled in front of a judge, paid a fine, and then allowed to go back to work. It was just a cost of doing business, and as Cat notes, the madams used it as a marketing opportunity, parading through town in their best clothes, and then returning to work to find an eager line-up of fresh customers.

As the madams were kicked out of Harris Street they gravitated north up to Alexander Street and my favourite part of the tour. A few of the buildings still exist so you can get a sense of what it was like over a century ago.

Dolly Darlington's brothel — 500 Alexander, as a sailor’s home in 1924 VPL 3127

Dolly Darlington, for instance, bought a sturdy brick building at the corner of Alexander and Jackson. Other madams such as Marie Gomez and Alice Bernard built luxurious brothels. A few still exist. The one at #504 was designed as a brothel by William T. Whiteway, the same architect who designed the Sun Tower and the Holden Building.

Marie Gomez brothel — Curt Lang photo, 1972 VPL85872X

You’ll also hear about these businesswomen’s marketing practices. French-born Alice Bernard only hired French girls, while Marie Gomez’s brothel was known as the House of all Sorts because it hired girls of all races. Marie was so proud of her brothel that she had her name set out in tiles. Unfortunately the tiles went into the landfill along with the building.

Tags Alice Bernard, Dolly Darlington, Dora Reno, Frankie Russell, Marie Gomez, Red Light Rendezvous, Sensational Vancouver, Vancouver Police Museum, William Bowser, William T. Whiteway

A brief history of Vancouver’s City Halls

by Eve Lazarus on July 26, 2014

Vancouver City Hall designed by Fred Townley — Vancouver City Hall in 1945 CVA City P45

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

Before Vancouver settled on its current City Hall on West 12^th, it had been housed in a number of really interesting buildings.

The Vancouver Police Department outside City Hall in 1886 VPL #1090

The first council started out in a tent shortly after the Great Fire wiped out most of the city in 1886. The tent was on the CPR pier at the foot of Main Street. Chief Constable John Stewart is pictured second from left.

149-151 Powell Street, finished in October 1886

Three months later, the Sentell Brothers were contracted to build the first city hall at 149-151 Powell Street–a two-storey wooden structure. It took just a month to build and came in at under $1,300. But the city couldn’t afford the tab, and the Sentell Brothers took the unusual step of shutting them out until they came up with the cash.

Powell and Columbia Streets Oppenheimer Bros Wholesale Grocers building 1898

The building quickly became too small for the growing city, and when David Oppenheimer was elected mayor in 1888, City Hall into his warehouse on Powell and Columbia. The building is remarkably still there, in a sketchy part of Gastown, rehabilitated and now owned by rock star Bryan Adams.

Oppenheimer was replaced by Frederick Cope as Mayor in 1892 and City Hall moved to the old Market Hall on Main Street (Westminster Avenue until 1910) in 1898 just south of the Carnegie Library at East Hastings and remained there for the next three decades. The building with its wonderful turrets was demolished in 1958.

Holden Block. Leonard Frank photo, 1936 CVA BuP56

In 1929 City Hall moved to the Holden Block at 16 East Hastings designed in 1911 by William T. Whiteway—the same architect who designed the Sun Tower and Kathryn Maynard’s Alexander Street brothel.

Vancouver City Hall from Yukon, 1937, Leonard Frank photo CVA City P21

Since 1937 our art deco City Hall designed by Fred Townley has stayed at its current location on West 12^th. You can thank (or blame) Mayor Gerry McGeer for the look and the location, the first time a major Canadian city had built its city hall outside of the city.

Tags 149-151 Powell Street, Bryan Adams, Carnegie Library, Chief Constable John Stewart, David Oppenheimer, Fred Townley, Gerry McGeer, Holden Block, Kathryn Maynard, Old Market Hall, Opppenheimer Bros, Sentell, Sun Tower, Vancouver City Hall, William T. Whiteway

Click to read posts about:

Subscribe to Our Newsletter