We have featured one of the buildings on this block – the smallest building with the biggest blade sign. Arnold & Quigley, men’s furnishings, were at 540 Granville (these days numbered as 546 Granville). We’ve also written about the building closest to us on the right, the Bank of Montreal, designed in Montreal by Taylor and Gordon and completed in 1893. These two almost identical views are from the Vancouver Public Library collection of images in the public domain – from 1935 (above) and 1940 (below).
There are three other buildings on the block, one of them still standing today. That’s the Abbott Block, developed by Harry Abbott in 1889, designed by the Fripp Brothers. In 1909 Abbott, Vancouver’s senior CPR official, hired Parr and Fee to design alterations to the building that cost $7,100.
We’re not completely certain, but we’re pretty sure both the buildings to the right (south) of the Abbott block were built for the same developer, who happened to be the architect as well. Thomas Fee, the business half of the Parr and Fee architectural practice also developed buildings, as we saw in an earlier Burrard Street post. He built the large building with the spectacular square columns in 1902, and named it the Fee Block. The smaller infill building that completed the block was built a few years later, and we haven’t been able to identify the building permit – but Thomas Fee owned it in 1917 when he designed the replacement of the rooflights.
Today the Fee block has been replaced by an office building that’s a cousin (or perhaps a sibling) to a very similar office on the opposite side of the street that replaced the Bower Building. 570 Granville was completed in 2000, a 17 storey boutique office tower designed by Eng, Wright and Bruckner for the Campbell family.
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Changing Vancouver 