Eve Lazarus's Blog: Every Place has a Story, page 34

Selwyn Pullan Photography: What’s Lost

I finally got a chance to drop by the West Vancouver Museum yesterday to check out the latest exhibition on the photography of Selwyn Pullan. Assistant curator Kiriko Watanabe has done an amazing job, not only pulling out some of Selwyn’s most interesting work, but also displaying the cameras that he used to shoot them with.

After serving in the Canadian Navy during the Second World War, Selwyn moved to Los Angeles to study photography at the Art Center School in Los Angeles where Ansel Adams taught. He worked as a news photographer at the Halifax Chronicle, and when he moved back to Vancouver in 1950 he found a new movement of artists and architects who were reinventing the house.

Selwyn reinvented architectural photography.

When he found that the Speed Graphic was inadequate for the movement needed for photographing West Coast Modern architecture, Selwyn built his own camera. Eve Lazarus photo

Several years ago, I asked him how he went about taking these photos. “I just look at the house and photograph it,” he said. “It’s a journalistic assignment not a photographic one.”

Shadbolt residence, Burnaby.. Architect Doug Shadbolt, owners & designers Jack and Doris Shadolt. Built 1950, Demolished 2004

Many of his photos were taken in the 1950s and ‘60s. They evoke a sense of time, optimism for the future, and perhaps even a new way of thinking. He intuitively understood the work of the architects he photographed, emphasizing light and space and often pulling in the homeowners and their children to show how the architectural and interior design fit with family life.

Home of artist Gordon Smith, West Vancouver. Erickson and Massey architects. Built 1954. Demolished 2010

His pictures show Gordon Smith painting in the studio designed by Arthur Erickson; there’s a young Erickson lounging in his own adapted garage; and Jack Shadbolt is photographed painting in his Burnaby studio. His stunning portraits of artists and sculptors include E.J. Hughes, George Norris, Bill Reid and Roy Kiyooka.

Phillips residence, West Vancouver. Barry Downs Architect. Completed 1957, demolished 2006.

While the photos in the exhibition showcase Selwyn’s work, they are also carefully selected to show our missing heritage—building after building both residential and commercial that no longer exist. The loss is particularly apparent in West Coast Modern.

Go see this exhibition—it runs until July 14. There’s a guest talk by Donald Luxton on Saturday June 30 at 2:00 p.m. which will be well worth your time.

Graham residence, West Vancouver. Erickson & Massey architects. Built 1963, demolished 2007

Selwyn died last September, after spending 65 years in his North Vancouver house, where he worked in his Fred Hollingsworth-designed studio, and where he parked his jaguar under a Hollingsworth-designed carport.

Fred Hollingsworth designed Selwyn’s North Vancouver home/studio in 1960.

Top photo caption: Birks Building. Architect Somervell and Putnam. Built 1912, demolished 1974.

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How the Museum of Exotic World became Main Street’s Neptoon Records

I had the pleasure of visiting Neptoon Records on Main Street for the first time last week. The place was packed with browsers, most of them young. The second thing I noticed was the sheer number of records—thousands of them everywhere you look. They are filed neatly in the store, stacked down the stairs, and they fill the basement. Owner and founder Rob Frith, tells me that he had to stop renting one of the upstairs rooms so he could use it for storage.

Neptoon’s Rob Frith in the basement of his Main Street store. Eve Lazarus photo.

You can pick up a used album for as little as $1 or pay up to $1,500 for a 1960s sealed copy from a Canadian band called the Haunted. Most things will set you back between $5 and $25.

Rob bought the building around 2000 and moved his stock from the Fraser Street store that he started in 1981. At that time, he was in construction, the economy crashed, and when he was casting around for things to do, he knew he didn’t want to work for anyone, and he liked collecting vinyl. “One day I thought maybe I should open a record store.”

Guessing the number of records at Neptoon’s is like guessing the number of jellybeans in the jar

“People who collect are obsessive,” says Rob. He knows because he’s a collector—records, posters, menus, old contracts, buttons, photographs and concert ticket stubs.

His store is now the oldest independent record store in Vancouver. It’s survived CDs, and iTunes and Spotify.

“We hung on long enough that there was a resurgence almost 20 years ago,” says Rob. “It’s gone leaps and bounds since then.”

It started when kids wanted to be deejays and increased when they found mum and dad’s turntable and old records in the basement. Now music labels are releasing new pressings and reissues on vinyl and that’s created a whole new market.

The building also comes with a great history. Rob, it turns out, isn’t the only owner who liked collecting.

3561 Main Street

The storefront first pops up in the city directories in 1951 owned by Harold and Barbara Morgan. The Morgans lived upstairs and ran a spray paint rental business downstairs. Every year since the ‘40s the couple travelled to a different place—New Guinea, Borneo, Africa, Guatemala—and brought back souvenirs. When they retired in 1989, they turned the store into the (free) Museum of Exotic World packed it full of collectables—a stuffed alligator, butterflies, a shrunken head and hundreds of photographs—and opened it for a few hours each day.

There’s a suite upstairs that’s straight out of the 1950s with brand new appliances from that decade including a clothes dryer and a stove that was never used—it still had the instructions inside. Rob has rented it out to a TV show.

When the Morgans died they bequeathed their vast collection and their ashes to Alexander Lamb’s antique store at 3271 Main Street. Which as you might expect, will be the subject of a future blog.

Main Street looking North from 26th, 1920s. Courtesy CVA LGN503

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The Point Ellice Bridge Disaster – May 26, 1896

On May 26, 1896, 143 people crammed onto Streetcar No. 16 to cross the Point Ellice Bridge. It was Queen Victoria’s birthday and they were on their way to attend the celebrations at Macaulay Point Park in Esquimalt. They never made it.

The middle span of the bridge collapsed under the weight and the streetcar plunged into the Upper Harbour landing on its right side. Fifty-five people were killed that day, most of whom had been on the streetcar, but also some who were just on the bridge.

Point Ellice Bridge disaster aftermath, May 29, 1896. Courtesy BC Archives C-06135

The bodies of the victims were laid out on the lawn of the Point Ellice house and those of its neighbours.

New Westminster photographer Stephen Joseph Thompson, just happened to be in Victoria that day and he had his camera with him. He snapped a photo and quickly realized that he had a business opportunity and ran an ad in the Vancouver News-Advertiser the next day.According to the British Columbia Encyclopedia the Point Ellice Bridge Disaster was the worst accident in Canadian transit history. The cause was attributed to poor bridge maintenance, an overcrowded car and poor safety standards.

Most people know it as the Bay Street Bridge now—it’s been there since 1957, and it’s the sixth bridge to span the Upper Harbour.

Courtesy BC Archives G-04577

Top photo: Point Ellice Bridge disaster May 26, 1896. Stephen Joseph Thompson photo. Courtesy CVA Out-P247.1

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Our Missing Heritage – Vancouver Police HQ

After I stumbled over a photo of the former Vancouver Police Headquarters on East Cordova Street, I asked my friend Tom Carter if he knew why it had been destroyed. Was it to make way for the uninspiring three-storey building that took its place? Tom didn’t know, but I thought his comment was interesting—that it had actually survived longer than many of Vancouver’s other Edwardian buildings.

236 East Cordova Street shortly after opening in 1914. Courtesy CVA 371-2129

“This never ceases to amaze me,” said Tom. “The second Hotel Vancouver was just over 20 years in use, and the old CPR station was around 20 as well. There were so many incredible Victorian Romanesque granite-clad buildings that also saw just 20 to 40 years of service.”

Amazingly the old Coroner’s Court and morgue (now the Vancouver Police Museum) and the firehall survived. Photo: CVA 447-63 , March 4, 1956.

When the building was completed in 1914, JFCB Vance (my hero from Blood, Sweat, and Fear) moved his lab into the top floor. When he walked in the front door and up the wide marble staircase he couldn’t help but notice the huge stained-glass window that let in the light. The stairs led to the second-floor courtrooms, chambers, and witness rooms. Prisoners were transported from the large jail upstairs to the courtrooms by a separate interior staircase. The building also had elevators, a gym, a tailor shop which churned out police uniforms, and a kitchen in which prisoners’ meals were prepared.

The Vancouver Police Headquarters was designed by William Alexander Doctor, an otherwise unnotable architect who arrived in Vancouver in 1908 and was gone nine years later. Doctor may not have designed many buildings, but this one was gorgeous—an imposing brick and steel building with a cream-coloured terra cotta façade.

It was built to last for centuries, instead it came down after just 42 years.

Here’s what we did with the space

Top photo: 236 East Cordova Street on July 22, 1956. Photo by Ernie H. Reksten, courtesy CVA 2010-006.170

Sources: Don Luxton’s Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, 2007 and the Statement of Significance for William Doctor’s house at 5903 Larch Street.

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Let’s Do The Scramble

There’s a Facebook post going around about “pedestrian scrambles”—intersections where every car stops and pedestrians cross in all directions.

It’s a simple concept that saves you from being turned into road kill by a turning car.

The video goes onto tell us that “over 40% of pedestrian crashes happen at intersections,” and after scrambles are implemented “severe crashes have gone down by 63%.”

More cities are using them—they’re now in Los Angeles, Portland and Washington, DC.

Pedestrian scramble at Granville and Hastings Streets in 1952. Courtesy CVA 772-15

Okay, that’s nice, but innovative? No, that makes it sound like something that the Americans have just invented.

Melbourne has had a crisscross, as we called them, for as long as I can remember at Elizabeth Street, across the road from the Flinders Street Station. Albury, a town on the border of NSW and Victoria also has one.

Pedestrian scramble at Granville and Hastings Streets ca.1940s. Courtesy CVA  1184-1810.

According to Wikipedia, Vancouver was one of the first cities in the world to use them at Granville and Georgia and Granville and Hastings Streets way back in the 1940s. After that it caught on with a traffic engineer from Denver, Colorado who introduced the scramble to his city in the late 1940s and it became known as the Barnes’ Dance, because “Barnes had made people so happy they’re dancing in the streets.”

London, Ontario has had one since the 1960s, and many cities in Canada have them including Calgary and locally here in Steveston, BC.

Pedestrian scramble in Steveston, courtesy Binnie Engineering

Toronto has at least three but took out its Bay and Bloor scramble after a staff report that sideswipes had more than doubled and rear-end crashes were up by 50% “likely due to increased driver frustration.”

The scrambles stayed in Vancouver until the ‘60s when they were nixed because they put pedestrians before cars. More recently, plans to introduce one along Robson Street were cancelled because they could prove confusing for the blind.

Nothing, I’m sure that couldn’t be fixed by a little innovation.

So, what do you think, should we scramble our busiest crossings or leave them alone?

And while we’re at it, let’s bring back the streetcar.

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Swastikas and the Traveller’s Hotel

I was over on Vancouver Island this week doing some biking and stopped in at Ladysmith. It’s the first time I’ve been there and it was great to walk down a main drag that still has many of its heritage buildings. Most were in good shape—the one glaring exception was the Traveller’s Hotel which sits on a hill on First Avenue.

Eve Lazarus photo, May 2018

The three-storey Edwardian building is in rough shape, but what struck me was the line of brick swastikas along the façade of the building. I was surprised to learn that swastikas were not a Nazi invention but rather something they co-opted from Asian culture in the 1920s.

According to Wikipedia, Swastika (from Sanskrit Svastika) is an ancient religious symbol that means good luck and dates back at least 11,000 years.

The Traveller’s Hotel was built in 1913, years before the Nazi party turned luck into something evil.

Aside from several grave markers in a Japanese cemetery in Cumberland, it may just be the only structure still standing in Canada that has retained these symbols and their true history.

It’s been a couple of decades since the Traveller’s Hotel was an actual hotel. A biker ran wet T-Shirt contests there at one point and for many years it was overrun by squatters.

Other plans that have fallen through over the years include condos and retail, condos and a restaurant, a chocolate manufacturer and a boutique hotel.

Realtor Wes Smith says more recently the Traveller’s Hotel almost sold to an investor who planned to renovate the building and turn it into a dispensary and vape lounge, as he did quite successfully with the Globe Hotel in Nanaimo. The deal fell through when the City of Ladysmith introduced a by-law to kick marijuana out of town.

Bridget from the Ladysmith and District Historical Society tells me that when she moved to the town in 1966 the hotel was a “jumping, hopping place” and stayed that way through the 1970s and ‘80s.

“It was the place to go on Saturday nights,” she said. “You couldn’t get a parking place on First Avenue for all the different hotels in the evening and on the weekend.”

Courtesy Ladysmith and District Historical Society

I didn’t spend much time in Ladysmith, but there didn’t seem to be a huge amount of night life left.

That may change now that a father and son team (the son is a chef) have bought the building and plan to renovate and revitalize it and open an upscale restaurant on the ground floor and a hotel upstairs. Wes says the plan is to have the restaurant open in the fall.

I’m happy the hotel will survive, I hope the Swastika’s do as well—it’s important not to erase our history.

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City Reflections: The Epic

I am excited to tell you that City Reflections is now on YouTube . As you’ll read in John Atkin’s story, it was a massive volunteer undertaking by members of the Vancouver Historical Society. It has been, and will continue to be, a huge tool for researchers—I would never have got John Vance (Blood, Sweat, and Fear) to work on his first day in 1907 without it! 

A huge thank you to Jason Vanderhill for getting me the stills from the film.

By John Atkin, civic historian

It was a silent, jerky and disjointed film shot from the front of a BC Electric streetcar in 1907 that captivated the Vancouver Historical Society’s audience members one September evening in 2004. Colin Preston, the former CBC Archivist had just introduced everyone to a recently restored version of the earliest known moving image of the city.

The film shot by American film maker William Harbeck was one of a series that played in specially designed theatres that replicated the experience of riding a streetcar. Long thought lost, the film was rediscovered in Australia and sent to the Library of Congress, eventually ending up with Library and Archives Canada.

As the evening ended someone in the audience suggested that it would be fun to create a modern version of the film. And with that, a project was born. It sounded simple enough, so a small group of volunteers got together to think about and begin planning how to tackle the job of recreating Harbeck’s film. The self-imposed deadline of 2007, the film’s hundredth anniversary seemed far enough away to be doable.

However, the project quickly shifted from just reshooting the route to developing a documentary about Harbeck, annotating the streetcar’s route and developing background information about Vancouver in 1907. Scripts were written and then rewritten and written again as the focus of the project shifted.

Wes Knapp chaired the project and helped secure sponsors. Colin Preston contributed the best possible copy of the film on DVD. John Atkin, Andrew Martin and Chuck Davis did much of the research. Mary-Lou Storey acted as production manager. Ernst Schneider and Jason Vanderhill contributed technical expertise and graphic design. John Atkin and Jim McGraw worked on the script. Jim did the final storyboard, directed and narrated. Paul Flucke oversaw the finances.

The project timeline was thrown for a loop with the announcement of the Canada Line construction which meant Granville Street would be off limits in 2007, so initial filming was moved up a year.

On shooting day, the team assembled at CBC on Hamilton Street to set up the camera car and get ready to hit the streets. CBC had generously supplied a camera man (Mike), camera and video stock to assist us in the shoot. Andy and Pacific Camera Car supplied the truck and Vancouver’s film office helped us out on the closure of Cordova Street—we had to drive the wrong way to match the 1907 route.

Another year of work to complete all of the pieces of the project and it was ready to be unveiled. In May of 2008, 101 years after the original film was shot, an audience of 400 people sat down to watch the first public showing of the VHS production of City Reflections.

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Mount Pleasant’s Coulter House

Did you see the article in the Georgia Straight last week headlined “Modest Vancouver heritage home proposed to be reborn as boutique restaurant”? The accompanying picture showed a funky purple Victorian house with pink trim and the kind of cool architectural doodads, that we don’t see anymore.

Sweet, I thought. Instead of pulling down another heritage house we’re going to repurpose it into a restaurant. And then I looked at the design rendering.

Yikes!

The funkiness has been stripped out along with the colour—it’s now white with a touch of grey—like a piece of public art. I guess someone thought a red door would be a good idea so restaurant patrons could find the entrance. The rest of the house is swallowed up by a six-storey, glassy non-descript building.

This is why people hate facadism.

The house has sat at 35 West 6th Avenue between Manitoba and Ontario Streets for going on 120 years.

The goal for the Vancouver Heritage Commission, says Michael Kluckner, was to try and retain some memory “however marginally,” of the working-class housing that once covered that area.

I sat on the Heritage Commission for North Vancouver District for four years and I understand the frustration of trying to save heritage and its many compromises. But in a case like this I think we have to ask—really?—what’s the point?

Mount Pleasant from City Hall in 1956.  Coulter House is in the top right of the frame. Courtesy CVA Sc P144.2

It seems a sad end for a house that gave sanctuary to a century of working class people. William Henry Coulter, who built the house was a millworker. Later owners include a tinsmith, an upholsterer and a shoe store clerk. In 1912, Sidney Boutall built and ran a neighbourhood grocery store in the front of the property and had the forethought to include sleeping quarters. The store lasted until 1978, and for much of its existence was known as the Sixth Avenue Grocery.

This working-class house had a paper makeover and was listed for $1.4 million in 2011.

According to the Statement of Significance the house is ‘important for its historic connection to Mount Pleasant’s early development, for its survival as a residence in what is now an industrial area, for its working-class occupancy history and for its design.”

Nope, not seeing any of that being salvaged in the new design—it’s taken away the context.

But I guess if people want to really know what Mount Pleasant looked like, restaurant customers can just look across the street. Amazingly, there are several of the original homes, still housing people that show what Mount Pleasant used to look like when the streetcar rattled along Main Street.

Houses along West 6th Avenue in 2011, from Vanishing Vancouver the Last 25 Years. Courtesy Michael Kluckner.

As Patrick Gunn at Heritage Vancouver says: “At times, the sum is greater than the parts.”

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

Our Missing Heritage: 18 Lost Buildings of Vancouver

Originally from Edmonton, Raymond Biesinger is a Montreal-based illustrator whose work regularly appears in the New Yorker, Le Monde and the Guardian.

In his down-time, Biesinger is drawing his way through nine of Canada’s largest cities. He’s just finished Vancouver, the sixth city in his Lost Buildings series, and his print depicts 18 important heritage buildings that we’ve either bulldozed, burned down or neglected out of existence.

Biesinger uses geometric shapes to ‘build’ his building illustrations

The lost buildings include iconic ones such as the Georgia Medical-Dental building, the second Hotel Vancouver, and the Birks Building, but it also includes the Stuart Building, the Orillia, Electric House, the Mandarin Garden and Little Mountain–described as “British Columbia’s first and most successful social housing project” (there’s a full list below).

#16 Vancouver Art Gallery (1931-1965) Courtesy CVA 99-4061

Biesinger spent loads of hours researching photos from different online archival sources, as well as local journalists and blogs such as mine.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of amazing buildings missing from our landscape for Biesinger to choose from and narrowing down his list was a challenge. He looked for buildings that were socially, architecturally or historically important.

Union Station designed by Fred Townley in 1916. and demolished in 1965. Illustration by Raymond Biesinger

“I tried to get a selection of buildings that had a variety of social purposes—so residences, towers, commercial spaces, athletic spaces, transportation spaces, entertainment and that kind of thing,” he says. “At one point my Vancouver list had mostly theatres on it, because there were so many gorgeous old Vancouver theatres.”

Two of the biggest losses for Vancouver, in Biesinger’s opinion, was the Vancouver Art Gallery’s art deco building on West Georgia and the David Graham House in West Vancouver designed by Arthur Erickson in 1963.

David Graham House in West Vancouver. Designed by Arthur Erickson in 1963

“It just blew my mind that this west coast modern house was demolished in 2007. Someone bought it for the lot and knocked it down so they could put up a McMansion,” he says. “The VAG building from 1931 is incredible. When I found that it was love at first sight. The supreme irony that it was knocked down and is currently a Trump Tower is insane.”

Biesinger has a degree in history from the University of Alberta, and between 2012 and 2016 was at work on a series that showed 10 different Canadian cities during specific points in their history—for example—Montreal at the opening of Expo ’67 and Vancouver during the opening of the Trans-Canada Highway in 1962.

Vancouver in 1962. Courtesy Raymond Biesinger

“What really fascinated me was the buildings that weren’t standing any more, and that people were surprised that existed,” he says.

So how does Vancouver stack up against heritage losses in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary?

​”The worse a city’s record for preserving old buildings, the more enthusiastic people are about these prints,” he said. “Vancouver has done a poor job. I think the economic currents running through Vancouver are just insane and not in favour of preserving the old.”

The Stuart Building sat at the entrance to Stanley Park. It was demolished in 1982. Photo Courtesy Angus McIntyre

The 18 Lost Buildings:

1. Georgia Medical-Dental building (1928-1989)

2. Electric House (1922-2017)

3. The old Courthouse (1888-1912)

4. Little Mountain (1954-2009)

5. Birks Building (1913-1974)

6. Mandarin Garden (1918-1952)

7. The Stuart Building (1909-1982)

8. Vancouver Athletic Club (1906-1946)

9. Pantages Theatre (1907-2011)

10. Union Station (1916-1965)

11. The Orillia (1903-1985)

12. Market Hall (1890-1958)

13. Vancouver Opera House (1891-1969)

14. The second Hotel Vancouver (1916-1949)

15. Ridge Theatre (1950-2013)

16. the Vancouver Art Gallery (1931-1985)

17. Majestic Theatre (1918-1967)

18. David Graham House (1963-2007)

For more posts on Vancouver’s missing heritage:  Our Missing Heritage

Biesinger’s Lost Building posters are $40 and you can order through his website: fifteen.ca 

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

A Short History of Cates Park

If you’re looking for something a little different, skip Quarry Rock, Honey’s Donuts and the ice-cream shops of Panorama Drive and head to Cates Park.

There’s a ton of history spread over the six kilometres of waterfront park.

Robert Dollar Sawmill in 1918. Photo courtesy VPL 20574

In 1916 a San Francisco-based lumber baron named Robert Dollar bought 100 acres and built a huge mill at the bottom of what’s now Dollar Road. There were no roads leading into Dollarton, no bridge spanning the Second Narrows, and no regular ferry service. Dollar built a wharf for his ships and a town for his employees with a post office, gardens, community hall, church and school. He rented houses to his employees for $15 a month.

The Dollar Mill operated until 1942.

Worker’s housing at Robert Dollar’s sawmill in 1939. Photo courtesy VPL 6535

See that strange cement structure in Little Cates Park? My kids thought it was a castle and used to play in it when they were little. Although it makes a great fort, it’s actually the remains of a waste burner and the only thing left to tell the story of the lumber mills that operated around Dollarton in the early part of the 20th century.

The mill changed hands a few times and closed permanently in 1929 at the onset of the Depression.

Malcolm Lowry outside his Dollarton shack

Squatter shacks started to pop up around Roche Point in the 1930s, and by the 1950s there were close to a hundred along the waterfront, many built on pilings and erected from wood and other materials scavenged from the beach. There was no running water, no electricity and no heat. The most famous of the squatters was Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano among others. His shack was one of the last holdouts–all traces of the shacks were destroyed by 1957.

If you look out over Burrard Inlet you can still see the same view that Lowry looked out on more than 50 years ago—the Burnaby oil refinery that he hated—has been there since 1932.

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