Pacific Metropolis

Hertige Vancouver's Top Ten

This past weekend, Heritage Vancouver released it's Top Ten Endangered Sites for 2007.

Number one on the list is the Burrard Street Bridge, which Heritage Vancouver warns will be 'disfigured' if current plans to widen the bridge's sidwalks are allowed to go ahead.

Other notable structures on the list include St. Paul's Hospital, and the Vogue Theatre. The latter is to be converted into a 1000-seat supper club, which VH fears may lead to 'significant alterations' to the building's interior. On the other hand, the building will also undergo a much-needed renovation and seismic upgrade by the new owners.

As for St. Paul's, there have been longstanding rumours that the hospital may be moved to the False Creek Flats, while the old red-brick building would be turned into condos.

Fortunately, many of the endangered properties are not really in that much danger. It turns out that in some instances, Heritage Vancouver is simply lobbying for heritage status protection of these buildings.

They do make an important point though - there is a danger of losing some of Vancouver's most interesting buildings through neglect.

Mole People

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.

The Sun Tower

Down in that busy little corner of Vancouver where new condo towers are going up at the International Village and Spectrum sites, and where Beatty Street seems to be coming alive with several heritage building renovations, is one of Vancouver's most recognizable buildings - the Sun Tower.

Vancouverites might be interested to know that it was originally called the World Tower, as it had been built by Louis Denison Taylor, publisher of the World newspaper, and Vancouver's longest serving mayor.

Apparently the building's nine barebreasted maidens caused quite the scandal when it was first unveiled to the public in 1912.

In 1924, the Vancouver Sun bought the struggling World, but did not move into the World Building until 1937, when the Sun's offices burned down. At that point, the building was renamed the Sun Tower - a name that it has retained ever since, despite the fact that the Vancouver Sun has since moved on to another building itself.

For more information on the Sun Tower and additional pictures, link here to Vancouverhistory.ca's website. Wikipedia has a brief entry on the Sun Tower as well - link here.

From Gastown to Vancouver

As hard as it is to believe, the little settlement that would one day become Vancouver was once the smaller sibling of New Westminster; back in 1873, New Westminster's population was about 1500, while Gastown's population was just 75.

Even harder to believe - Vancouver's main bar, Gassy Jack's saloon, closed at 10:30pm. According to the Greater Vancouver Book, Gassy Jack wanted to ensure that the lumbermen and longshoremen would be up for work the next day.

Gastown had been renamed Granville in 1870 (after the British colonial secretary), in an effort to give the small milltown a little more respectability, however locals still referred to their little cluster of homes, shops and saloons as Gastown until 1886, when the City of Vancouver was offically incorporated.

As the story goes, just months after Vancouver was born, all 400 of the city's buildings (except for two) burned to the ground in less than an hour, due to a brush-clearing fire that got out of control. The city was of course rebuilt, with "warehouses, hotels and more permanent homes" serving the growing port community around it, according to 123vancouver.com.

As the city expanded westward, Gastown became a warehouse district in the 1920's, but if fell on hard times during the Great Depression, when many of its old hotels began to fill with the indigent. It was almost lost in the 1960's, when a proposed waterfront highway would have led to the neighborhood's destruction. Fortunately, local residents succeeded in saving Gastown, which was declared a historic site in 1971.

For more information about Gastown's past, check out the hisory section of www.gastown.org. There's also a pull-down menu on the site, with individual profiles of several historical buildings.

And in case you're looking for an excuse to go visit Old Vancouver, the Tour de Gastown is set to roll on July 20th. The Storyeum is also worth checking out, for a fuller recounting of British Columbia's history.

Vancouver's First Suburb

Before it became 'Vancouver's first suburb', Mount Pleasant was once "a dense forest, diagonally bisected by an ancient trail travelled by First Nations peoples and wildlife such as deer, bear and elk," according to the authors of the Greater Vancouver Book.

The neighborhood was named Mount Pleasant in 1888, after the Irish hometown of H.V. Edmonds' wife - a New Westminster council clerk who, in 1869, had bought land in the area, based on his speculation that the transcontinental railway would eventually end somewhere nearby.

In the 1880's, the trail connecting the former capital of New Westminster with the smaller sawmill town of Vancouver was upgraded and named the Westminster Road (today's Kingsway).  At the time, there were only a few stagecoach roadhouses located along the old trail.

As Vancouver started to grow in the late 1880's, people believed that Mount Pleasant "would develop as Vancouver's fashionable 'uptown'." Although the neighborhood did experience significant residential growth over the next 20 years, industry came to the area as well.

According to the City of Vancouver, by 1904, Mount Pleasant was home to "a tannery, two slaughter houses, four breweries, and a train station." Eight years later, Vancouver's first skyscraper, the Lee Building (pictured below) was built at 175 East Broadway, which was followed in 1915 by what is today known as Heritage Hall.

In subsequent years, much of the False Creek tidal flats and the mouth of Brewery Creek were filled in, stripping Mount Pleasant of its waterfront land. More industry arrived in the neighborhood during the 1930's, which resulted in the destruction of several homes and a decline in the area's prestige.

After struggling for several years with problems related to prostitution and drug abuse, the neighborhood is presently undergoing a renewal, with park and transit improvement projects planned by the city. Over the next few years, the area is also expected to benefit from the re-development of the Southeast False Creek community.

Click here to see more pictures of Mount Pleasant as it is today.

Hycroft Mansion

One of the great homes in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighborhood, Hycroft Mansion was originally constructed in 1911 for the Vancouver businessman and politician, Alexander Duncan McRae.

Known for the society parties that were hosted by the McRae family during the 1920s and 30s, Hycroft Mansion includes 30 rooms, 11 bathrooms and 12 firelplaces. Although it still retains its beautiful Italian garden, Hycroft once had a covered swimming pool and private tennis courts on its property as well.

Among the most intriguing features of Hycroft Mansion are the various secret panels throughout the building, apparently used by its residents to store family heirlooms. There are also rumours that the house is haunted by as many as seven ghosts.

Today, the Hycroft Mansion is owned by the University Women's Club of Vancouver. The house is open to the public on special occasions, and it is also available for weddings, conferences, and concerts.

If you'd like to have a look at Hycroft Mansion, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation's annual Open Vancouver is being held on Sunday, June 5th from 10am to 5pm. For $35, you'll receive a guidebook and pass, permitting you to conduct a self-guided tour of 10 heritage homes. An additional $10 will buy you a "light lunch" at Hycroft Mansion, to be served from 12pm to 2pm.

For a virtual tour of the property, with still photos and a QuickTime video, click here.

The Origin of Yaletown

According to the good folks at the Roundhouse, Yaletown got its name in the late 1880's, when the Canadian Pacific Railway moved its construction equipment and repair shops from their former location in Yale (up the Fraser Canyon) to its new western terminus in Vancouver.

Heritage Vancouver goes on to note that several of the original CPR employees "literally moved house, loading their homes in Yale onto flatcars or barges and setting them on new foundations near False Creek. The community clustered around the CPR's roundhouse and yards at the foot of Davie Street."

Sadly, most of the original houses have long since been destroyed. One home from the area that did survive, however, is the Leslie Lane House, which was originally built as a stable in 1901, and then converted into a home in 1903.

It sat behind the Leslie House (constructed in 1888, now home to Umberto's restaurant), until it was moved from its former location at 1380 Hornby Street to the West End's Mole Hill heritage neighborhood in 2002.

Despite the city's success at preserving these two homes, Heritage Vancouver has named "the houses of Yaletown" as being among the ten most endangered sites in Vancouver for 2005.

For more information, visit www.heritagevancouver.org and select "Top Ten List".

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation has further details about the Leslie Lane House, along with pictures of its 2002 move and restoration here.