Comments on: The Georgia Medical-Dental Building

By: Elizabeth Libera

Elizabeth Libera — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 05:14:54 +0000

I went there a lot as a young one with so many dental problems. First with my Mom in 69 as an 11 year old and by myself from Renfrew Street as a 12 , 13, 14 year old. Off the bus on Granville and walked down so many times! Dr. Fransblow on the 5th I think? I also had a braces dentist there…Dr Tremblay or? Maybe on the 8th? I also had 2 dental surgeries there in a chair where they put me to sleep to find my 2nd front tooth which was stuck somewhere…omg….then a 2nd one to search for an eye tooth. 11th floor? I woke during one of them and looked at all 3 of my Dentists!
I feel so bad for Dr. Fransblow who was so kind, so skilled and then many years later, died in a small airplane crash as he was flying to some kind of airplane get together. He was so respected and loved!

By: Glenn Scott

Glenn Scott — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 21:39:00 +0000

Though not Art Deco, there was the destruction of the Birks building at West Georgia and Granville. They even destroyed the clock tower!

By: Rob Anderson

Rob Anderson — Sun, 24 Oct 2021 10:35:56 +0000

In reply to Rod Mickleburgh. 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.

By: Carmofoz

Carmofoz — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 05:30:16 +0000

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.

By: Marilyn Mulldoon

Marilyn Mulldoon — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:26:06 +0000

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.

By: Ian Forsyth

Ian Forsyth — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 00:16:18 +0000

In reply to Rod Mickleburgh.

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.

By: Canadian History Roundup – Weeks of May 28, 2017 and June 4, 2017 | Unwritten Histories

Sun, 11 Jun 2017 17:02:50 +0000

[…] Eve Lazarus looks back on what we lost when the Georgia Medical-Dental Building in Vancouver was demolished. […]

By: Rod Mickleburgh

Rod Mickleburgh — Sun, 28 May 2017 23:35:47 +0000

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….

By: Doug Parks

Doug Parks — Sat, 27 May 2017 22:12:20 +0000

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.

By: Jim Burton

Jim Burton — Sat, 27 May 2017 21:46:38 +0000

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.

By: Peter Brock

Peter Brock — Sat, 27 May 2017 20:21:12 +0000

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.