On May 28, 1989, we blew up the Georgia Medical-Dental Centre, a building on West Georgia designed by McCarter & Nairne, the same architects behind the Marine and the Devonshire Apartments.* What were we thinking?
The Devonshire was first, designed as an apartment building in 1924. Next came the 15-storey art deco medical building. The Marine Building was completed in 1930—the only one left standing.
What were we thinking?
As this more recent photo shows, the HSBC Building now sits where the elegant Devonshire Hotel used to be. The GMDB was blown up or perhaps blown down is more accurate—to make way for the twenty-three-storey Cathedral Place.
Paul Merrick, designed Cathedral Place, renovated the Marine Building, the Orpheum Theatre, and converted the old BC Hydro Building to the Electra. I quite like Cathedral Place. It’s nicely tiered, the roof fits in with the Hotel Vancouver across the street, and it even has a few nurses, gargoyles and lions pasted about as a reminder of the former building. Everyone over 35 likely remembers the three nurses in their starchy World War 1 uniforms looking down from their 11th storey parapets. Known as the Rhea Sisters, the terra-cotta statues weighed several tonnes each. Later restored, the nurses are part of the Technology Enterprise Facility building at UBC.
But here’s a thought. Instead of honouring a heritage building by sticking fibreglass casts on a new building, why not keep the original one! The Georgia Medical-Dental Building was only sixty after all—hardly old enough for its unseemly demise, but old enough to represent a significant part of our history.
The Devonshire:
I never saw the Devonshire, but I love one of its stories. According to newspaper reports, after being kicked out of the snotty Hotel Vancouver in 1951, Louis Armstrong and his All Stars walked across the street and stayed at the Devonshire. Walter Fred Evans, a one-time member of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra built the Devonshire, and supposedly Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and the Mills Brothers wouldn’t stay anywhere else.
* McCarter & Nairne also designed the Patricia Hotel, 403 East Hastings; Spencer’s Department Store (now SFU at Harbour Centre); the Livestock Building at the PNE, and the General Post Office on West Georgia.
For more posts see: Our Missing Heritage
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14 comments on “The Georgia Medical-Dental Building”
Cathedral Place is Merrick’s best pastiche – brazenly incorporating the verdigris roof of the hotel across the street and sticking the nurses back as a sop to the citizens who suffered the loss of the Georgia Medical-Dental building. I agree with Eve that as a whole Cathedral Place works and has tremendous character, with a lovely garden between the tower and Hy’s down Hornby. McCarter & Nairne, I hope you took pictures.
It was quite the crowd on hand to watch the demolition of the Georgia Medical Building, almost like a parade. I was working as a janitor at Pacific Centre Mall, and the cleaners watched the destruction along with the security guards in the mall, who let us onto the roof of the 30-story TD Tower at Georgia and Granvile. I found it difficult to handle my vertigo, looking down over the edge of the building’s flat-top roof with no railing or safety feature. The building’s collapse lasted about three seconds, before disappearing in a vast cloud of smoke, to the cheers of the onlookers.
The Devonshire was the place to go for an Alaskan King Crab diner. Luckily my wife and I managed to have that diner in the late 70s. The plate of crab was immense and I think we washed it down with a bottle of Blue Nun.
I attended some dentist appointments in the Georgia medical building and worked for a messenger company that had an office in the Marine Building. Curleys Messenger Service. Those buildings all had a sense of style and grace that we seldom see in current development. Your right that had they been left standing they would still be as useful as the cookie cutter office buildings that replaced them.
Well, normally i am one to decry the disappearance of old buildings, especially one with Art-Deco characteristics….and I was among those who thought the Medical-Dental building should be saved….Bryan Adams, yes that Bryan Adams, also joined in the campaign…but there was a certain reality about the Medical-Dental Building….it was very dark and gloomy inside, with very little charm, despite the early Art-Deco finishings and the wonderful nurses…(the later Marine Building was at least 10 times its superior) I did a story on its pending demise and remember Paul Merrick telling me: the issue should be judged on what replaces it….and i have to confess Cathedral Place is rather a lovely building, and sure, its hokey, but the nurses are there!….and they always remind me of the Medical-Dental building….so i think that’s good…one for Paul Merrick, i actually think it is better…..on the other hand, i thought the loss of the Devonshire (“the Dev”) was awful…i loved the corn beef sandwiches and glass of beer i’d get in their beer parlour, served of course by waiters in red jackets…saw both buildings implode….nothing, however, will ever equal the loss of the Birks Building….the biggest travesty of all….
I agree, I wasn’t old enough to understand of even care about the Birks Building, but in my rather thorough research of all things Vancouver, that is the one building I keep coming back to, and mourning its disappearance.
I’m not a save everything person, Vancouver grew very fast in fits and starts, so many things that were built in one era often became quickly obsolete and were not able to be retrofitted, like so many buildings in European cities. But the Birks building was different, together with the Hudson’s Bay store that corner was defined. The building was beautiful, and I think well built, (I’ve read many reports that the 2nd {or 3rd} Hotel Vancouver on Georgia and Granville, although stately and quite planted looking was actually constructed poorly, and its final use by returning veterans sealed its fate as unrestorable) and could have been incorporated into whatever new development was to go there.
But it did turn Vancouver on to the fact that we DID have a heritage and that there WERE building worth saving.
I disagree. The lobby of the Georgia Medical Dental building was an amazing piece of art deco. The elevator doors were polished brass. The stars on the ceiling and the colours were beautiful. The interior lobby of cathedral place is bright, and monotone, so if that’s what you consider beautiful, well so be it.
[…] Eve Lazarus looks back on what we lost when the Georgia Medical-Dental Building in Vancouver was demolished. […]
The Strand theatre is one of my lost favourites in Vancouver. I would sit and marvel at the beautiful interior whenever attending a movie. Of course, l first had to gaze at the mysterious Apothecary Shoppe below prior to ascending to the Strand. The loss of the entire Birk’s building was a deep cut into the soul of Vancouver.
I came to Vancouver long after these buildings had been demolished. It was a real shock when I first saw a photo of them and then found out what we had done with them
My first job as dental assistant: 4th floor, corner office facing Georgia/Burrard, in the Georgia Med Bldg. Great views. Lunch at Dev once a week, on warm days paper bag lunch on court house steps. Sometimes lunch in Hotel Van coffee shop, felt so grown up. Few blocks east: the white marvels of The Bay & Birks buildings. Often had coffee (& lots of cigarettes) at Scotty’s next to Birks. The Strand theatre was magic, so massive when you’re still youngish, & that apothecary shop! Bevelled thick glass windows & door insets everywhere. Grew up 50th & Fraser so coming into uptown ‘downtown‘ was so sophisticated. My parents shopped ‘down’ town: Woodward’s, army & navy. So happy I grew up where & when I did and was shocked to see what’s happened to Van in the 5 decades I’d been away. I mean, who green lighted all that destruction? West End was quirky, nice vintage brick apartment blocks & clapboard 4-squares, cute corner stores everywhere, Robson so old school international…now it’s bland glass/steel blocks, no need to look up from the sidewalk, it’s all unremarkable sameness. Sigh. Kits still has good neighborhood pockets.
Agreed. Still some great areas in Strathcona, Grandview Woodlands, Mount Pleasant etc. that we have yet to destroy.
[…] Centennial Fountain with view of the missing Devonshire Hotel and Georgia Medical and Dental Building. Vancouver Archives, […]
Though not Art Deco, there was the destruction of the Birks building at West Georgia and Granville. They even destroyed the clock tower!
The clock is at Granville and Hastings