If you're out for a stroll this weekend, you might be interested in ambling on over to downtown Vancouver's Mole Hill neighbourhood, located between Bute and Thurlow streets in the West End.
There, you'll find more than 30 Victorian and Edwardian heritage buildings, all of which were originally built between 1888 and 1918.
According to this brief history of Mole Hill (link to pdf), beginning in the 1950s, the City had started purchasing land in the area with the intention of building a public park and school. Over the years, residents fought to save their neighbourhood, until 1996 when city Council decided to renovate the heritage homes and set them aside as affordable housing.
Completed in 2003, the development restored 27 heritage buildings, creating as many as 170 multi-unit dwellings for low income residents in the area. All of the houses now rely on geothermal heating, while the neighbourhood has its own greenway and community gardens.
For more information about the area, have a look at the Mole Hill Community website here. We've also got an old post about the Leslie Lane House, which was relocated from Yaletown to Mole Hill back in 2002.
For some great photos, check out this article about the neighbourhood, that was published last November in Canadian Architect.
