This photograph was taken from the slope of Spruce Street (these days Choklit Park) looking across the yards of Vancouver Iron and Engineering Works some time in the 1960s. Through the 1920s and even earlier the Vancouver Machinery Depot Ltd were on this site; in 1928 the Vancouver Iron Works also appeared in the street Directory.
The company expanded on the shore of False Creek, becoming the biggest machine shop west of Toronto and north of San Francisco. Vancouver Iron and Engineering Works built equipment from propane tanks to logging equipment, and from stainless steel valves for the pulp & paper, chemical & petroleum industries to railcars for carrying woodchips.
In 1966 the company was bought by a US financier, and it looked as if it had a solid future – in 1968 an order was placed for six girders, each 190 feet long and weighing 110 tons for an Alaskan natural gas refinery worth $500,000. The company didn’t last much longer after that, and the entire South False Creek and Fairview area were transformed into a modest density neighbourhood (by Vancouver standards, and given the proximity to Downtown). The housing on the left is Fairview Place that was built in 1983 to Rhone and Iredale’s designs.
Image Source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 780-490
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Changing Vancouver 