Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 32

Riding the Spirit Trail – from Mosquito Creek to Pemberton Avenue (part 5)

At the end of our last post, we were watching harbour seals at Mosquito Creek. Now we’re going to take the Spirit Trail to Harbourside. While you may see a large tract of vacant land, as well as some businesses, a Spa Utopia, and an auto mall–developers see 700 condos, office space, retail stores, and a hotel.

Did you know that all the land at the bottom of Fell Avenue used to be tidal flats? In the late 1800s, James Pemberton Fell and his uncle Arthur Heywood-Lonsdale, bought District Lot 265 which included the foreshore rights. James had lofty goals that included a million-dollar marina and industrial complex. He got as far as building a seawall and creating 21 acres (8.5 hectares) of additional land before the Great War hit and all infrastructure plans were put on hold.

So, over 100 years later, let’s not go counting those condos until they’re hatched.

Eve Lazarus photo, 2018

Back on our bikes we’re going to ride along the waterfront past the off-leash dog park and take a hard right up Kings Mill Walk and the Harbourside West Overpass and onto Pemberton Avenue.

In the early 1900s several different flumes in North Vancouver transported logs and shingle bolts from the forests to the sea. They were long wooden chutes filled with running water, used by loggers like conveyor belts to float cedar shingle bolts from the hills above to the mills below.

Close up of the Capilano River flume in 1916. People used to walk along it in their Sunday best. Courtesy CVA 21-42

The Capilano River flume was the longest at over 12 kilometres in length. Built in 1905, it ran from Sisters Creek, just north of where the Capilano Reservoir is today, to a mill at the foot of Pemberton Avenue. The flume had a catwalk that ran alongside it so crews could do maintenance, but it was also accessible to the public.

In the early part of the 20th century the Capilano Timber Company had its own railway for transporting fir, hemlock and cedar logs from the upper Capilano valley to the firm’s grounds near the foot of Pemberton. The railway ran down the west side of the Capilano River, crossed the river and headed eastward, running along what is now the Bowser Trail behind Save on Foods. The train crossed Pemberton and Marine drive and headed south and lasted until the early 1930s.

Capilano River Flume (on left) for cedar shakes in 1900. Courtesy CVA 122-1

In the 1970s, Pemberton Avenue almost became the jumping off point for the North Shore’s third crossing. Alderman Warnett Kennedy, an architect and town planner lobbied for a tunnel under Thurlow Street that would carry cars and rapid transit to the North Shore over the world’s biggest cable bridge, and exit at Pemberton Avenue.

Instead, you’ll find Vancouver Shipyards and the headquarters of Seaspan, the largest tug and barge company in Canada. After winning a federal government contract in 2011 to build 17 ships that include a Polar-class icebreaker for the Coast Guard, the company built a new office on the western spit of the Seaspan property. Seaspan expects to fill it with more than 1,300 new shipbuilding and office staff by 2020.

Seaspan’s new offices, 2018. Courtesy Seaspan

Next post we’ll be winding through Norgate to Ambleside.

If you missed the first three legs catch up here:

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville (part 1)

Moodyville to Lonsdale Quay (part 2) 

Lonsdale Quay (part 3)

Mosquito Creek (part 4)

Top sketch: from Concert developers

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Ghost Signs: White’s Grocery of South Granville

Last Sunday when Fatidjah Nestman looked out of her high-rise on West 13th near Granville she noticed that an old ad for White’s Grocery had popped up when construction workers removed the cement siding from a building at 2932 Granville Street. Her neighbor, Karen Fiorini, took this picture of the ghost sign and kindly sent it to me.

“I wonder how old this is?” Nestman wrote. “The phone number Bay 433 predates the ‘60s.”

It certainly does.

White’s Grocery, a neighborhood store, was at that location from 1915 when the building first appears in the city directories, until 1931. It was owned by Thomas and Mary White, who also lived nearby on 13th Avenue.

Whites Grocery’s second store at 3039 Granville

In 1932, the Whites moved to a new building in the next block at #3039, and their former store became Treasures and Oriental Goods, owned and operated by a Mrs. Clark who lived in an apartment above. Mrs. Clark ran the store until 1950 when it changed to D’Arcy’s photography studio.

In 2018, the ground floor retail store at 2932 Granville belongs to Lord’s Shoes. The building sits next to a newer building with an upmarket Le Creuset Cookware downstairs and a Korean BBQ upstairs.

Found on a building at Granville & Robson in 2012. Vancouver Sun

On Monday, Fatidjah sent me this message: “Good thing we got the photo yesterday, today they are nailing siding over it,” she said. “It was a dream, now it’s gone, I wonder if the workers took any photos?”

I highly doubt it. But I guess that’s why they’re called ghost signs, because of their ephemeral existence.

Ghost sign for the Royal Crown Soap Company. Courtesy Lani Russwurm, 2018

Other signs that have popped up from that era include Rennie Seeds in False Creek, Shelly’s Bakery on Victoria Drive, Moneys Mushrooms on Prior Street, Wildrose Flower in Chinatown and Royal Crown Soap on the London Hotel on East Georgia and Main Street.

Restored ghost sign at 1190 Victoria Drive, Google Maps.

For more on ghost signs see Lani Russwurm’s great piece at Past Tense Vancouver

And, if you know of any others currently standing, please send me a photo and location!

We’ll continue our ride along the North Shore’s Spirit Trail in November

 © All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Mosquito Creek – (part 4)

Last week we left off at the Shipyards Coffee at Lonsdale Quay. Grab your bike and we’ll ride the Spirit Trail down Cates court, loop around Waterfront Park and enter Squamish Nation land.

The Coast Salish aboriginal people established a permanent village called Slah-ahn (also known as Ustlawn or Eslha7an), meaning “head bay” in the 1860s. The village was located along a stretch of mudflat at the mouth of Mosquito Creek.

Mission Reserve 1908. Courtesy CVA SGN 52

With the arrival of European settlers, it became known as Mission Indian Reserve No. 1—the first permanent settlement on the north shore of Burrard Inlet.

Emily Carr used to visit her friend Sophie Frank, a Squamish basket maker who lived at Mission Reserve and both she and E.J. Hughes painted the area.

Emily Carr painting, 1908. Courtesy BC Archives

In 1932, the Mission Reserve Lacrosse team won the BC Championship—they were that good. The team consisted mostly of members from the Baker, Paull, and George families, who took up the game, because as Simon Baker told a North Shore Press writer, they had nothing else to do during the Depression. “We used to practice and practice and that’s how we became famous in lacrosse. We used to pass that ball, push it in circles real fast. We were good stick handlers,” he said. The team was disbanded after the win because they couldn’t get a sponsor.

Eve Lazarus photo

You’ll notice a vibrant community of houseboats. A diner called the High Boat Cafe, and some great art. You can also see the 1884 St. Paul’s Church with its twin spires and gothic revival style.

Eve Lazarus photo.

Over the years, the natural course of Mosquito creek has been altered by logging, landfills, and new subdivisions, destroying much of the natural habitat and salmon. Much of that is being restored and rehabilitated.

The most recent portion of the Spirit Trail was just finished this year. It runs below sea level and dips under the boat lifts at the marina. Each time we’ve been there so has a ‘haggle’ of harbour seals, sunning themselves on the wood (behind me) or swimming by the trail.

Watching the harbour seals at Mosquito Creek

With thanks to the NVMA which makes all this research possible.

Next Week: Harbourside to Norgate.

If you missed the first two legs catch up here:

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville (part 1)

Moodyville to Lonsdale Quay (part 2) 

Lonsdale Quay (part 3)

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

 

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Lonsdale Quay (part 3)

There’s so much history at Lonsdale Quay, that I thought we’d stay here and let it roll over us while we caffeinate at the Bean around the World (now the Shipyards)

If we time travelled back to the late 1880s, we’d be sitting on Tom Turner “ranch.” It stretched from Chesterfield to Rogers Avenue and sloped down from Esplanade to the water. The farm house sat roughly in the middle—where ICBC is today. Turner’s farm supplied vegetables to Moodyville residents, and because he had the only grass field in North Vancouver, his farm became a picnic destination for the locals. Turner later sold the property to J.C. Keith (namesake of Keith Road) and returned to England.

North Vancouver Hotel ca.1905. CVA OUT P575.1

In those days, Esplanade was a wide tree-lined promenade that extended west along the shoreline from Lonsdale to just past Chesterfield. The Hotel North Vancouver and its Pavilion were on the north side of the street, where the Shoppers Drug Mart is today. The hotel, owned by Pete Larson, attracted people from all over Vancouver who took the ferry and stayed for $2 a day or $10 a week, or just came for the day to check out the bandstand, balloon flights or perhaps tight-rope walking. The hotel’s grounds also had a boat dock and a swimming beach, because in those days the water reached to just below Esplanade.

North Vancouver train tunnel opening in 1928. Courtesy NVMA

Unless you’ve been stuck at the foot of Chesterfield Avenue waiting for a train to pass, you’ve probably not given much thought to “the Lonsdale Subway.” The Subway is actually a 1,585 foot tunnel, built in the late 1920s to link two railways. The tunnel ran from St. Georges to Chesterfield and connected the Terminal Railway to the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (later BC Rail, then CN Rail).

At the foot of Lonsdale in the 1970s. NVMA 15806

Most North Vancouver residents will remember the Seven Seas, a restaurant that was moored at the foot of Lonsdale. Some of you may even remember it as Norvan Ferry #5, a forerunner to the Seabus, and one of the ferries that brought people to Vancouver and back. Ferry #5 went into service in 1941 and was sold to restauranteur Harry Almas for $12,000 in 1959, a year after the ferries took their last run across the Inlet.

The Seabus in 1977. Courtesy NVMA

After the Seabus launched in 1977 and kick-started economic activity in Lower Lonsdale, a plan was hatched for the Lonsdale Quay development. The thought was that densification of the area, with over 300 housing units, restaurants and shops would be encouraged, but care would also be taken to restore the heritage buildings in the corridor. Mayor Jack Loucks was certainly optimistic. “It has been said that Lonsdale Quay will become an extension of Granville Street,” he said. “I like to think that when the project is complete, Granville Street will become an extension of Lonsdale Avenue.”

Eve Lazarus photo

Well, perhaps not. More like a parking lot for billionaires and their luxury yachts.

Next week we’re getting back on our bikes and cycling the newest part of the Spirit Trail from Lonsdale Quay to Mosquito Creek.

*Top photo: View of North Vancouver west of Lonsdale Avenue showing Tom Turner’s cabin in 1890. Courtesy CVA OUT P79

If you missed the first two legs catch up here:

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville (part 1)

Moodyville to Lonsdale Quay (part 2) 

The  © All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along the North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville to Lonsdale Quay (part 2)

At the end of last week’s blog, I left you at Moodyville Park, the only thing left of a once thriving town. Now hop back on your bike and follow the signs west along First Street East—and be careful of those construction trucks! I imagine in another year or so this area will be unrecognizable, but occasionally you’ll see a bungalow–the lone standout in a sea of rubble.

North Vancouver war-time housing 1943. Courtesy BC Archives 41451

Some of those holdouts were built during WW2 when Wartime Housing, a crown corporation, built tracts of neat cottages for shipyard workers. According to North Vancouver Museum and Archives, rents averaged $20 per month plus $1.35 for water services. The website says about 100 wartime houses still survive, but I’m not confident how current that is.

You’ll see signs taking you down the squiggly path and onto Alder Street and along the working waterfront.

PGE moved to its temporary home on the Spirit Trail in 2014

The old Pacific Great Eastern (PGE) Railway-North Van’s first train station—is boarded up and stuck behind a chain link fence until a new home is found for it (I hope).

On January 1, 1914, the PGE began service from this station at the foot of Lonsdale Avenue to Dundarave. At the time the plan was to extend the tracks to Squamish, but that didn’t eventuate and the railway only went as far as Horseshoe Bay. The railway service ended in 1928, and the station became a bus depot, and then was used as offices until it was moved to Mahon Park in 1971. It was spiffied up and returned to its home at the foot of Lonsdale in 1971, and moved to its current location in 2014.

Palace Hotel in 1909. Courtesy NVMA 8155

The Spirit Trail takes you along Esplanade and down St. George’s to Victory Ship Way. If you look up the street you’ll see a 15-storey condo tower at East 2nd called the Olympic. In 1906 Lorenzo Reda built a brick hotel in that spot. Within two years, he added more rooms and a dance hall, and in 1908 the Palace Hotel boasted that it was “the only hotel in British Columbia with a roof garden.” Reda died in 1928. The hotel became the Olympic, and by the ‘70s (when it was known locally as the “Big O”), it was hosting rock bands and strippers. It was demolished in 1989.

The Shipyards in 1948, courtesy CVA Wat P58

.Aside from a couple of the old shipyard buildings and artifacts, most of the buildings have been torn down and replaced with condos. This was a hopping place during WWII, and Burrard Dry Docks was the first to hire women in significant numbers and pay them decent wages.

Women workers at Burrard Dry Docks, 1945. Courtesy NVMA 1421

And some of you may remember the Erection Shop that sat at the bottom of St. Georges until political correctness made the shipyards take the sign down for Expo 86.

Clay Mccallum-Dubois photo, ca.1979

We’ll start at Shipyards Coffee at Lonsdale Quay next week for a chat about the history of the area.

If you missed the first leg see the North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

The North Shore’s Spirit Trail – Moodyville (part 1)

In May 2014, the City of North Vancouver inked a deal with the Squamish Nation and moved a step closer to realizing the dream of building a 35-kilometre waterfront trail that would wind its way from Deep Cove to Horseshoe Bay.  The mostly finished portion of the Spirit Trail runs from Sunrise Park (just above Park and Tilford Gardens) to 18th Street in West Vancouver–(just past John Lawson Park). The ride (or walk) along the finished portion is about 20 km return.

The Moodyville Park section was completed in 2015. The trail includes an impressive overpass to Heywood Street, a mini-suspension bridge, public art, and some now fading public markers. You’ll have to reach deep down into your imagination, because the only thing left of Moodyville is a small park with some signage surrounded by a lot of building activity.

A two-storey hotel opened in 1883 and it was reportedly “a comfortable and exceedingly well-managed” operation, with a bar stocked with top wines and liquors, and where “drunkenness was unknown.” The Columbian, photo NVMA 1900

Up you go over the new overpass, and a great view of the working waterfront that takes you right into Moodyville, once a thriving town built entirely around lumber. Settled in the early 1860s, the town was completely distinct from the rest of North Vancouver with a business district that included a library, Masonic lodge, school, jail and cookhouse situated where the railway tracks and grain elevators are today. The mill was at the foot of what is now Moody Avenue, and a wooden wharf extended from the mill out over deep water. The town even had its own ferry service.

William Nahanee (with laundry bag) and a group of longshoremen on the dock of Moodyville Sawmill in 1889. CVA Mi P2

While the workers were comprised of several different races who could trace their origins back to Europe, Asia, the Pacific Islands “Kanakas,” Latin America and the West Indies, lived in segregated housing; the wealthy lived in “Nob Hill” a nod to San Francisco’s prestigious neighbourhood.

The most prestigious house was Invermere, known as the “Big House” and built in the late 1870s for Hugh Nelson a partner in the Moodyville Sawmill Company (later Lieutenant Governor of BC). Lumberman John Hendry bought Invermere and lived there for a time. His son-in-law Eric Hamber, another Lieutenant Governor of BC, demolished the house after his death. The replacement house is at 543 East 1st Street.

The Big House in 1881. Courtesy NVMA

Electricity came to Moodyville in 1882, a full five years before Vancouver and the electric lights reflected all the way across the waters to Hastings Mill in Vancouver.  Moodyville was the first town site north of San Francisco to sport electric street lights.

By 1898 the Mill’s fortunes had peaked and in 1901 it closed.  People moved away in search of work, and business activity shifted to the waterfront at the foot of Lonsdale Avenue. Moodyville officially became part of North Vancouver in 1925.

“Moodyville was the largest, oldest, most prosperous and certainly most decorous settlement on the Inlet. It had a population of several hundred, all respectable families, with tidy homes strung along well-laid out streets up the hillside from  Moody’s mill.” Photo ca.1890 CVA Mi P22

The Low Level Road, constructed two years later, paralleled the railway line.  Much of the hillside was scraped away and re-deposited as fill on the tidal flats to reclaim 15 acres (6 hectares). Midland Pacific was first to locate on the fill and opened a grain elevator in 1928. The area known as Nob Hill was subdivided, war-time housing followed, and a housing development called Ridgeway Place sold in the late 1950s.

Today Moodyville is just one big land assembly parcel for sale

With thanks to the North Vancouver Museum and Archives for letting me work on their  Water’s Edge Exhibit in 2016.

Next week: Riding the Spirit Trail from Moodyville to Lonsdale Quay

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Art, History and a Mission

In 2016, the Vancouver Historical Society was contacted by the Port of Vancouver and asked what we’d like to do with a three metre-high sculpture made from BC granite that had been sitting on their land at the foot of Dunlevy Street since a previous board commissioned it 50 years before.

Since it was the first that any of us had heard of it,  we did some research and found out that in 1966, the VHS had contributed funds towards a $4,500, three-piece sculpture created by Gerhard Class  to mark the 100th anniversary of  Hastings Mill, which for a time, was the nucleus of Vancouver.

We took a field trip to check it out. It’s a beautiful piece of art, and a shame that no one really gets to see it.

The problem for the port was that the sculpture sat in a garden behind the Flying Angels Club, built in 1906 as the headquarters for the BC Mills Timber and Trading company and a fixture of Hastings Mills.

In 1966, the National Harbours Board occupied the house  and did so until the 1970s when the Mission for Seafarers, which runs the Flying Angels Club, took possession.

Up until 9/11, the Mission was easily accessible and surrounded by gardens that led to the waterfront. Post 9/11 madness, the Port is wrapped in a chain link of security which has marooned the house in a kind of cul-de-sac.

Over the years, the garden shrank as the port expanded. When we were contacted in 2016, the Port was planning to install shore-power transformers where the sculpture sat. To give the Port of Vancouver’s Carol Macfarlane, a huge amount of credit, she went to enormous lengths to find the sculpture a new home.

“It reminded me of an iceberg,” she said. “The monument is 8.5 ft. tall, but the underground is over three feet high and seven feet wide.”

And, when we realized the sheer lunacy of having to work with three levels of government to make the sculpture more accessible somewhere else, we opted to move it to the front of the house.

It’s not easy, but please go visit this sculpture. Maybe drop in and visit the Mission to Seafarers while you are there.  Perhaps even drop off some books or games or clothes that you no longer need. They’ll be most grateful.

Thanks to Carol Macfarlane, project manager, Port of Vancouver for the photos

YVR: Fifty Years Ago

On September 10, 1968 the Vancouver International Airport opened a spanking new terminal building to handle all domestic, US and international flights. It was one of the few airports where aircraft could pull up to gates attached to the terminal and where passengers could load and unload via a bridge.

YVR 1960s expansion of runways and taxiways. Courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority

The building was designed by Zoltan Kiss of Thompson Berwick Pratt, the firm that served as an incubator for such other up-and-comers as Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Barry Downs and Fred Hollingsworth and designed buildings such as the game-changing BC Electric building on Burrard Street in 1957.

Courtesy The Netletter

The terminal had the modern design, clean lines and open spaces common to mid-century architecture at the time. It screamed jet-setting technology and speedy travel.

The new terminal building at YVR taken shortly before it opened. Courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority

If you’ve taken a plane from Vancouver to any other point in Canada—you’ve walked through this terminal. You’ve also likely noticed the two large air-intake towers that flank it. These concrete towers were an engineering feat back in 1968 and replaced the old system which had the air intake in the roof. When the wind would blow the wrong way, employees and passengers would complain about the overpowering smell of aviation fuel.

Courtesy Vancouver Airport Authority. YVR 1960s

“I remember how large and modern it was compared to the old (now South) terminals,” says Angus McIntyre. “You could drive your car up to the departure level, park and pay 25 cents at a meter. Hah!”

YVR officially opened in 1931 when the City of Vancouver invested $600,000 in a runway and a small wood framed building topped by a control tower after US aviator Charles Lindbergh refused to visit because there was “nothing fit to land on.”

YVR 1958. Photo courtesy Bob Cain

Big changes happened in the 1960s after the City sold the Airport to the Department of Transport. By 1968 the airport sat on more than 4,000 acres of land, and the terminal building, which cost $32 million, served close to two million passengers in its first year of operation.

Half a century later, more than 24 million passengers pass through YVR each year.

And, while air travel today generally sucks, the good news is that not one person died in an accident on a commercial passenger jet last year —making 2017 the safest year ever.

Top photo: From “Through Lion’s Gate,” a 1969 Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board publication.

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Jimi Hendrix Plays the Pacific Coliseum—September 7, 1968

This is an excerpt from Sensational Vancouver.

On September 7, it will be 50 years since Jimi Hendrix played the Pacific Coliseum. Four years after the Beatles and 11 years after Elvis Presley played Empire Stadium and changed music forever. The difference was that Jimi had a Vancouver connection—his grandmother Nora Hendrix, a one-time vaudeville dancer who moved to Vancouver in 1911 with her husband Ross Hendrix, a former Chicago cop and raised three children. Al, the youngest moved to Seattle at 22, met 16-year-old Lucille, and Jimi was born in 1942.

Nora Hendrix lived at 827 East Georgia between 1938 and 1952. Photo: CVA 786-4736 1978

According to Jimi Hendrix, the Man, the Magic, the Truth, a biography published in 2004, Jimi lived in 14 different places, including short stints in Vancouver. “I’d always look forward to seeing Gramma Nora, my dad’s mother in Vancouver, usually in the summer. I’d pack some stuff in a brown sack, and then she’d buy me new pants and shirts and underwear. I kept getting taller and growing out of all my clothes, and my shoes were always a falling-apart disgrace. Gramma would tell me little Indian stories that had been told to her when she was my age. I couldn’t wait to hear a new story. She had Cherokee blood. So did Gramma Jeter. I was proud of that, it was in me too.”

Dawson Annex, Burrard and Barclay Streets, demolished 1969. Courtesy VSB

According to the Vancouver School Board Archives and Heritage, in 1949, Jimi attended grade 1 at the West End’s Dawson Annex while living at Nora’s house on East Georgia. “It was a long distance to the school so he probably took the bus or streetcar since the fare was only five cents,” notes the VSB.

Shortly after Hendrix left the army in 1962, he hitchhiked 2,000 miles to Vancouver and stayed several weeks with Nora. He picked up some cash sitting in with a group at a club called Dante’s Inferno on Davie Street, now a gay nightclub called Celebrities.*

Now Celebrities Nightclub, 1022 Davie Street was called Dantes Inferno in the ’60s. Courtesy Places that Matter.

Six years later, when Jimi Hendrix Experience played the Pacific Coliseum, one reviewer described the band as “bigger than Elvis.” Hendrix, dressed all in white, played hits such as “Fire,” “Hey Joe,” and “Voodoo Child.” At one point he acknowledged his grandmother, who sat in the audience, and launched into “Foxy Lady.”

In 2002, Vincent Fodera renovated the building at Union and Main Street and found dishes and a stove that he believes came from Vie’s Chicken and Steak House, part of Hogan’s Alley where Nora once worked as a cook. Seven years later Fodera opened a shrine for the dead rock star. Locals told him that Jimi used the space for rehearsals and sex.

Jimi Hendrix Shrine Main and Union Streets. James Gogan photo, 2013

When Jimi played the Pacific Coliseum in 1968 he was 25. Just over two years later, the man widely recognized as one of the most creative and influential musicians of the 20th century was dead.

1022 Davie Street was designed by architect Thomas Hooper for the Lester Dancing Academy in 1911. Hooper also designed He designed the Victoria Public Library, and Munro’s Books Building in Victoria. And in 1912, the same year he designed Hycroft in Shaughnessy, Vancouver’s Winch Building and submitted plans for UBC, he designed Christina Haas’s, Cook Street brothel

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

The 1981 PNE Prize Home

In 1981, British Columbia was in the throes of a recession, house prices were plummeting, and first-time buyers were looking at interest rates of over 20%.

Architectural offices were closing, and even a starchitect like Ron Thom was searching for clients. So, a commission to design the PNE prize home likely would have been very welcome.

Thom had cut his teeth designing more than 60 mid-century modern homes mostly on the North Shore, but had moved onto work on commercial buildings such as the BC Electric Building in Vancouver, and after he opened an office in Toronto, designed the Massey College, the Shaw Festival Theatre and the Toronto Zoo.

For the PNE he designed a bright and airy home of close to 4,000 square feet—more than twice the size of earlier prize homes. Behind the solid oak front door was a dramatic glass-roofed atrium which soared up from the courtyard entrance to the roof. Short flights of stairs led to the living areas, a self-contained master bedroom was placed at the top of the house and four bedrooms below. It was bright and airy, and likely frightening for people used to traditional houses with small rooms, two floors and a basement.

It was also quite complex to build and the cost went from $250,000 to $450,000, which didn’t include the Coquitlam lot which had been purchased as its designated resting place.

Batex Industries, the builder, ran into financial trouble and liens were placed on the house by several contractors, and by Thom.

2324 129B Street, South Surrey

In the end, winners Ray and Ruth Swift decided it “was the weirdest house” and PNE staff thought it too modern for the average family. The Swifts took $250,000 in cash, and Ron Thom’s PNE house sold for $2,500 and was shipped to a lot in South Surrey.

In 2018, it was valued at $2.6 million.

Top photo: Courtesy Vancouver Sun, 1981. Ralph Bower photo

For more on the PNE Prize home: The PNE – Party like its 1957 and 10 things you won’t see at the PNE this year

 

Source:

Elizabeth Mackenzie’s 2005 thesis “The PNE prize home—tradition and change.”
Sensational Vancouver

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.