These were the Elizabeth Apartments in the West End, seen exactly 50 years ago. They were developed in 1926, and designed by R T Perry. The developers were also listed as the builders of the $65,000 ‘Apartment; Two-storey, frame const., covered in stucco’, ‘Moxam & Tod’.
Andrew McTear Tod, and John Archibald Moxam were partners in a development business that built at least five West End apartment buildings, all with the same architect, and many of them with a fairly similar design. Most saw a large house from the late 1890s or early 1900s demolished to make way for a 2-storey walk-up apartment. This was a larger site, and a slightly different design to the others.
John Moxam was from Foresters Falls, Whitewater Region, Renfrew, Ontario. He was born there in 1882, and he married Blanche Boyle there in 1906, and the couple had a daughter, Margaret. We can’t find the family in either the 1911 or 1921 census records, but they were in Calgary in 1912. Margaret married Lieutenant D Newall, but he was killed early in the war, and she married again in 1941 to another serviceman, Lieutenant W Rorke of the Calgary Highlanders.
Andrew Tod was Scottish, born in 1884 in Larkhall, Lanarkshire, and arrived in Canada in 1902. His wife, Isabel Janet Service came to Canada from Glasgow at the age of 16, in 1905 (following her brother). The family were in Edmonton in 1913 when their only child, Philip, was born. Mr Tod was working as a motor driver there when he signed up to fight in France in 1917, and was demobilised in 1919 in Vancouver.
Moxam and Tod arrived in 1925, having developed nine apartment buildings in Winnipeg, two in Calgary and two in Oakland, California, and immediately developed five apartment buildings here, three in the West End and two in Fairview, in the spring of 1926. This followed soon after, in October. Having overstretched their business financially, the business was liquidated in 1929. This had already been sold to ‘a local investor’ a year after the building was completed, Pemberton’s Realty office sold it, named the Roslyn Apartments, for $95,000.
By 1931 Andrew and Isabel Tod had moved to Nanaimo, where Andrew was an insurance broker. They moved back to Vancouver in 1936, but six days after arriving Isabel died, Her death was entirely unexpected, and the death notice recorded the fact that she was the sister of Candian poet, Robert Service. Andrew Tod died in Vancouver in 1950.
John Moxam moved to Victoria, where he had owned a home since 1912, and he continued to develop apartment buildings, including a hotel in Oak Bay. He died in Victoria in December 1941.
Roland Raymond lived here in 1936 when car was stolen, and was subsequently written off. Four men, believed to be safecrackers, were chased by police at speeds of up to 80 miles an hour at four in the morning, and crashed the car in Burnaby, rolling it six times. Remarkably all four men were able to run away, but were arrested later. The case against them fell apart when witnesses gave an entirely different version of events at the site of the accident than police evidence, and the judge acquitted them. That same year J C Short had $300 of jewelry stolen from his apartment here.
In 1947 Edward Gudewill married Janey Cherniavsky, and the Sun announced they would be moving here. Edward worked for the family Goodwill Automatic Music Co, and had $60 stolen from car, parked in a garage. The entire sum was in nickels, as Mr Gudewill’s job was emptying the family’s rented jukeboxes, and weighed over 60 pounds.
Some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s, the building name changed to The Elizabeth. In 1954 a batchelor suite was $70, and a 3-room suite $82.50 in 1960, but in 1982 rent inflation meant a large 1-bedroom apartment leased for $450 a month. By 2003 the building was the Roslyn again, and a 2-bed apartment was $1,600 a month – a high rent for the time, but no doubt justified by the description of the suite; ‘Funky – Hip – Stylish’. In 2009 935 Jervis Holdings were looking for a manager for the 10 unit building – ‘must speak Korean’. The furnished suites today lease for between $2,750 and $4,500 a month.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 1095-01238
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Changing Vancouver 