This rather simple 2-storey building was at 514 Cordova, away from the established centre of Gastown, but close to the CPR station. It sat in the middle of the block and in this picture dating back to 1887, just a year after the fire, you can see that the sidewalk has been levelled but the road still needs to be raised to meet it. The US Consular Agency were downstairs (with a huge Stars and Stripes on the roof), while upstairs William Kent and Eugene Talcott kept the Bayview Hotel. A variety of other tenants are listed – three with the designation ‘captain’ (Jones, Rogers and Holmes), E Teather an artist was here, as was Septimus Gough, an organist. At 518 John Canning kept a fruit store. By 1901 street renumbering had changed it to 614 West Cordova, the building was home to the BC Mining and Prospecting Exchange and the hotel was listed as The Grand.
In 1906 Dalton and Eveleigh were hired to rebuild and expand the hotel on only two-thirds of the original site, and combining elements of earlier names it became Austin’s Grand View Hotel . (That’s it on the left in 1913, photographed across the construction site for the new station building). 
Proprietor Alf Austin played up his English roots (and sold Bass Burton Ale on Draught.
A smaller building to the west housed the Park Rooms, designed by Maclure and Fox for H M Daly in 1911. To the east R J McDonald was hired by F W Padmore to design a much taller, narrow building completed in 1912 by W M Horie at a cost of $64,000. (There were two sequential permits for $50,000 and another for $14,000 – presumably signalling Mr Padmore’s decision to make the building taller). By 1925 this had become the Almer Hotel. By 1959 the block was run down, and the western end was cleared and replaced with the parking garage we see today. A few years later the St Francis and Almer Hotels were cleared away for 333 Seymour, designed by Tudor and Walters.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archives Str P99
0136
Changing Vancouver 