In 1910 when the permit was obtained for this building, it was described as ‘stores and rooms’. Out 1978 image shows that the stores haven’t been apparent for over 40 years. For some reason the Assessment Authority think this dates from 1905, but for some reason almost nothing was built on this block in the first decade of the 1900s, unlike all the other blocks in the area.

The developer was shown as Alexander, R. (Mrs.) and the architect was H McKinnon. The only logical person in the city was Hector MacKinnon, who was a real estate broker with an office nearby on Main Street. H McKinnon had permits as a builder, owner and architect of various projects, mostly in the East End of the city. He was in partnership with Murdoch Campbell in 1909, but sole proprietor of the business a year later. He was Scottish, and proved hard to find as the census either missed him, or mis-named him. We can find his wife, Catherine (formerly McLeod) who was mentioned in the local press a lot, as she was a violinist. Hector was only 54 when he died in 1930. His wife was living in White Rock when she died in 1945.

Mrs. R Alexander could have been the wife of Richard Alexander of BC Mills. Isabella, from Ontario, and was 34 when the building was constructed. However, other permits suggest a different Alexander. The builder of the $7,000 building was shown as Alexander & McKinnon. There’s no identified business with that name in the street directories, or the press, so we suspect it was a one-off partnership, probably of relatives of the architect and developer. In 1908 R Alexander had a $5,000 house built on Larch Street – the first building in the area. Robert Alexander was in Real Estate, and already retired at 55 according to the 1911 census. His wife was Mary, from Ontario, who was 46. The family had a domestic servant, but no children at home. In 1911 the family built a garage at their home; the architects were Alexander & MacKinnon and the builder H MacKinnon, presumably the same H McKinnon who also built the house in 1909. That permit is why we think Mary was the Mrs. R Alexander who developed this building.

Mary was 42 and single when she married Robert in 1908 in Revelstoke. He was a widower, and his profession was shown as ‘gentleman’. Robert was 54, from Forfarshire, and Mary was born in Beaverton, Toronto. The marriage certificate didn’t include a line for her occupation, and the 1901 census – when she was still living in Ontario – didn’t show one either. She was head of a household with her two younger sisters and two boarders. In 1921 Robert and Mary had moved to Alberta Street, and Robert is shown as a ‘retired merchant’. He first appeared in a Vancouver street directory in 1906, and was already shown as retired. It’s possible he was the Robert Alexander who died in Vancouver in 1923, leaving property in Saskatchewan that the BC Government attempted to tax on his death. They failed, after two court cases. Mary Grant Alexander died in 1952, aged 87.

When they opened these were the Harris Rooms – the name of the street they were built on at the time. The BC Candy Co was on the main floor to the east, and Atkins Co to the west. The Harris Rooms were run by Miss C M Morgan, who lived on the premises, and Atkins Co were sheet metal workers, installers of cornices, and furnaces. It suggests that perhaps the plain box seen in our 1978 image wasn’t the original appearance of the building, but we haven’t seen other images of this block that are earlier.

By 1920 Harry Barzman (who lived in a house next door) was running his butchers business in one of the stores. The other was vacant, and oddly, the rooms aren’t mentioned. In 1925 The Zion Kosher Meat Market was in 527, run by Coleman Kolberg. The Harris Rooms were at 531, and the other store, 533 had Joseph Costanzo’s grocery store. In 1930 Guiriato Attilio had taken over the grocery store, and in 1936 Kametaro Mochizuki was running the rooms, and the second store was the Maxim Gorky Club. In that year it was reported that “Meat valued at $45 was stolen from the Kosher Meat Market”. Five years later “Russian residents in Vancouver collected $2457 for medical aid to the Soviet Union at meeting held Sunday at 533 East Georgia Street, under the auspices of the Russian Committee in Aid of the Native Land. The money will be forwarded through the Red Cross.” The hall was vacant later that year, as was the hall, and the rooms were run by O Kawaguchi. They would be removed from the Lower Mainland a year later as war was declared with Japan, and John Berezowecki (who was a shipyard worker) took over running the rooms. The Russian National Committee had taken over 533. They would later move to the nearby Russian Hall. By 1955 this had become the Cathay Lodge rooms, with one store vacant, and Benson Hoy living in the former hall location. Benson, and his wife Edna ran the Cathay Lodge.

Some reports continue to list the building and its 33 rooms as Cathay Lodge, but the owners changed it to ‘Metro’ several years ago.

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This brick faced warehouse was, according to its Heritage Statement, built in 1912 for the Vancouver – Prince Rupert Meat Packing Company. While the developer is correctly identified, the building permits weren’t submitted until 1914. There were three permits in total; two in January for $6,400 (presumably for preliminary work) and another in April for $50,000. The company designed all three stages of construction of the 33 feet wide, and 7 storeys high building, built by E J Ryan. It’s on the same block as a ‘rival’, and slightly earlier coldstore and meat-packing building, owned by the Canadian Swift Meat Packing Co.

By 1919 Swift owned the Vancouver – Prince Rupert Meat Co (as well as many other companies), and there is some suggestion that the business was always a subsidiary of Swift (a Chicago-based business). Swift had their name on the building in 1923, but by 1930 they had consolidated to their building to the east, and David Spencer’s departmental store were using this building as their warehouse. T Eaton and Co bought the Spencer business in 1948, and continued to use the warehouse. (When they operated as a rival to Spencer’s, they had a warehouse a block to the west of here).

As Gastown turned into a tourist area, the ground floor became a gift shop (seen in this 1985 image) and today a shoe store, with office space in the converted warehouse above.

Image Source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 790-2097

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Like the rooming house to the west, (more recently known as the Wonder Rooms) this building was designed by Hugh Braunton, in this case a year later in 1912. The developer was W G Harvey and the building opened as the Alvin Rooms, although they didn’t appear in a street directory until 1914, when they were run by H McIntyre.

The first year he was in Vancouver, 1895, W G Harvey’s store was at 322 E Cordova, and he was living at 515 Westminster Avenue. In 1896 the store had moved to 326 Westminster Avenue, and was described as ‘the leading East End Dry Goods Store’. In 1898 the store was at 400 Westminster Ave, and the family were living at 338 E Hastings, and in 1901 they had moved again, to 800 Hornby. That was the family home through the 1900s, although the store moved again to 70 W Cordova, and then in 1910 to the Hornby address. A year later William had retired, and moved to Shaughnessy, to the corner of Matthews and Granville.

Mrs W G Harvey died in 1919, and was only 58. We can trace from the details on her death certificate that Florence Gabriel married William George Harvey in St Mary’s Church St John’s, Newfoundland in 1891. The family must have moved west quite soon after that; Beatrix Harvey was born in 1892, in Victoria. (She married Ernest Williams in Vancouver in 1919, just before her mother’s death, and died in 1966 in Victoria). Lancelot William Harvey was born in 1893 in Victoria, married in 1921 and died in Coquitlam in 1980. In the 1901 census the children were recorded as Beatrice and Lance, and their uncle (W G’s brother) Herber Harvey was living with the family. W G Harvey was 64 when he died in Vancouver in 1925.

Miss J Anderson was running The Alvin Rooms in 1930, and Mrs S Saiga in 1940. In the 1940s these became the Franklin Rooms, in 1945 run by Choy Chin, and then by 1950 The Cordova Rooms, the name previously held by the building to the west. Choy Jung was shown running them that year, but by 1955 it was shown as Choy Chin again.

The Cordova Residence, as it’s now known, was part of the SRO Renewal Initiative of public owned heritage hotels, so we have documented evidence of the state of the building prior to restoration, and some of the more unusual aspects of the structure. It has a solid wooden frame – the main floor timbers are 12″ x 16″ with 2″ x 4″ laminated floors – suggesting a warehouse or perhaps industrial intended use. There’s an original wooden framed manually operated freight elevator from the main floor to the basement, and a belt-drive jack shaft to power a lathe also survives in the basement. The basement was linked to the building next door, and there’s an original rolling metal-clad fire door across the doorway. All of these elements were preserved in the renovation.

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The building here is called The Central Residence and has been owned by the City of Vancouver for nearly 20 years, but it was built as two separate structures. Each cost $40,000, and 48 East Cordova (the left hand side of the building) was built first, in 1911, followed by the right in 1912. We assume the design of the first, by Hugh Braunton (for W C Marshall) was copied by Archibald Campbell Hope, whose client for the second was the Vancouver Realty Co. They were a business that had been around for a while, but this was their swansong. By the time the 1912 street directory was published the business was no longer listed, and their offices at 433 Seymour were vacant.

We can however provide an explanation for choosing a different architect; the Realty Co were represented by (and probably controlled by) Hope, Gravely & Co, a long-established firm of engineers, accountants and financial agents, with engineer Charles Hope partnering with pioneer land agent Walter Graveley. Charles was from Bradford, in England, and had studied architecture, like his father. His younger brother – the architect of the later building –  was A C Hope, who had been in San Francisco in 1906, and moved north in 1908.

William C Marshall lived on Pacific Avenue with his 41 year old American wife Edna, their two children, and her mother, Susan Darcy. He was from Ontario, aged 48, and in 1911 was shown as living on ‘income’. His wife and mother-in-law had come to Canada in 1884, and William and Edna had married in 1904 in New Westminster. William Crozier Marshall was a widower, which explains how he had a 12 year old daughter at home, Elsie, and an 11 year old son, William, when he married Edna, who was 24 and born in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.

His first wife was Jennie (or Jenny) Loveless, and they had another daughter, Minnie, who was married in 1909 when she was 19.  Jennie had been 19 when she married William in 1888 in Vancouver, and had been born in Burton-on-Trent, in England, but she died in 1893. William had three very young children, so it must have been a relief to marry a widow from Ontario, Frances Chase, (known as Bertha), in 1895 and a further tragedy when she also died, in 1901. She was recorded in the census that year, with the children and two lodgers. The local press reported the nature of her death. “Well Known Lady Dies Suddenly This Morning in St. Paul’s Hospital. A very sad death took place this morning, the victim being a well known lady, Mrs. Bertha Marshall, wife of W. C. Marshall, of this city. Only last Friday the deceased lady was taken to the hospital, and a day later an operation was performed by Dr. McPhillips, which at the time appeared to be successful. but blood-poisoning set in mid early this morning the lady gradually sank and passed away. Mrs. Marshall had a very large number of friends in the city and was universally well liked. She was 32 years of age and had been married a little over three years. She lived since early childhood in Chilliwack, where her people are well known.”

Before he became a real estate investor, William had run a livery stable, with the earliest record we can find for him being a payment by the City Council to W C Marshall, drayman in 1888. His inaccurately named ‘Sleepy Dan’ was a notable member of the stable. He was a frequent winner at the Richmond racetrack, and at Hastings Park. In 1905 he was fined $5 for racing on Cordova Street against Tommy Roberts – who also had to pay the same fine. Residents reminisced in the Vancouver Sun about hiring a horse and buggy from ‘Billy Marshall’ to impress a girl on a Sunday afternoon to take them riding around Stanley Park.

William was elected as an alderman in 1916. He was 73 when he died in 1937; the Province reported his death: “William C. Marshall, 73, pioneer of Vancouver In the livery business, died Wednesday night at his home, 1217 Pacific street He had been ill more than a year. Fifty-two years ago Mr. Marshall arrived from Ontario and, with Steve Tingley, drove the first horse stage from Esquimalt into Victoria. Next summer he came to Vancouver to live and for many years was in business on Water street. Marshall’s livery was a landmark In the old days. Twenty-five year ago he retired. He served as an alderman for several years”. Edna was 85 when she died in 1965.

When they opened the two establishments were used slightly differently; 42 was operated as the Central Hotel. Next door at 48 there was a business on the main floor (in 1920 the Kloepfer Hardware Co Ltd) and the Oliver Rooms upstairs. That was true through to the 1950s, although the Central Hotel had become rental rooms by then, run by J K Fun and Sue See in 1955. The Oliver Rooms were run by Harry and Anne Sherban.

This was one of the first buildings in the area to be converted from market to non-market housing. The work was done in 1973-74 by the United Housing Foundation with Jonathan Yardley as architect. During the renovation, which involved the consolidation into a single property, it was discovered that the builders had made the work easier by already leaving blocked up doorways between the two buildings. Our 1978 image shows it as The New Central. In 1980 the City of Vancouver, as owners since 1986, added a fire alarm system throughout the building. In private ownership it had 131 tiny rooms; today, as the Central Residence following a 2003 renovation (following two fires in rooms) the building was reconfigured with CMHC and BC Housing funds to create 64 larger units, 54 with their own bathrooms. Residents are 55+ or under 55 with a disability, although the building is not wheelchair accessible.

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The Vancouver Public Library say this image was shot on 8 July 1920 by the Dominion Photo Co. It shows the electric substation for BC Electric that dominated the street – and especially the wirescape – around this stretch of Main Street. It was built and rebuilt several times over a few years. Some work was designed in-house, but in 1903 Blackmore & Son had designed the substation on the corner here, costing $32,000 and built by E Cook.

This image shows a $12,000 addition built in 1912 as well; (the building on the right). A year earlier one of the the concrete smoke stacks had cost $16,000, designed by C C Moore and Company. They were specialist engineers who also supplied the boilers in the sugar refinery, and they had constructed the first $6,000 chimney in 1910 designed by Weber Steel Concrete Co, a US specialist chimney designer.

After this image was shot, in 1923, Coughlin & Sons were hired to carry out another $15,000 of alterations, although there’s no obvious difference to the buildings in this 1929 VPL image, except there seems to only one chimney remaining for the auxiliary power supply. (B C Electric had built a hydro-electric generating station at Buntzen Lake as early as 1903).

B C Electric built a new substation just to the north of these buildings, between 1945 and 1947. The Murrin Substation is still standing, and in use, today. Designed by McCarter and Nairne, the open air transformer yard replaced the buildings to the west, down Union Street. A new smaller substation building designed by Sean McEwan was added more recently on the corner. (William G. Murrin was the president of the British Columbia Electric Railway Company from 1929 to 1946.)

The Murrin Substation is currently expected to be decommissioned around 2030. BC Hydro reviewed a number of options, including rebuilding a new substation on the Murrin substation site. A new site has been acquired, as upgrading the existing facility isn’t a viable option because it sits on seismically unstable soil. It’s technically not feasible and cost prohibitive to seismically upgrade the site to appropriate levels.

With the viaducts to the immediate south expected to see removal and redevelopment, this stretch of Main Street will look very different in a few years time.

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This rooming house has seen better days, but we were surprised to see how much it’s gone downhill since our picture from 1978. Back then there were still patterned stucco panels and windows with coloured glass and fancy glazing bars.

The 1911 census showed Jerome Martin was 57, living at 466 Barnard (today’s Union St), with his wife Mary, who was 42, and their 2 year old son, Harold. Jerome was a bricklayer, born in Belgium, and it said he arrived in 1905 and that Mary was from Ontario. She was, but Jerome had married Mary in Vancouver in April 1904. His marriage certificate said he was a bachelor, and a bricklayer. (It also, inaccurately, said he was born in 1858). Historian James Johnstone found that Mary Jane O’Brien applied for the water connection for a house at 466 Barnard in August 1904 (Although she was actually Mary Jane Martin by then)

In 1905 they were living in a house at the rear of 757 Prior, and Jerome was shown working as a mason. He got a permit for a frame dwelling on Barnard St in 1905, and another in 1906. From 1906 to 1908 the family were living at 466 Barnard, and Jerome was shown as a bricklayer. In 1908 J C Martin of 466 Barnard obtained another permit for a house on Prior Street. From 1909 to 1911 the Martin family lived at 753 Prior. (Different families were living at 466 Barnard over this period). In 1911 J C Martin had a permit for a $1,000 1-storey frame dwelling house at 466 Barnard. That was probably an initial permit for this building, although oddly, there doesn’t seem to be an detailed permit for an apartment. The water permit was obtained in October 1912 by Jerome Martin, so the building was completed at that point.

The 1912 street directory showed J Clement Martin as the proprietor of the Whitehorse Rooms, and living at the renumbered 468 Union. Later that year, in December, the Daily World reported “Chief Justice Hunter yesterday gave judicial sanction to the separation of Jerome Clement Martin and his wife, Mary Jane Martin. The custody of a child will remain with Mrs. Martin, and she will be paid $15 a month. This decision was the result of the chief Justice holding a private conference with Mr. and Mrs. Martin and effecting a settlement with the aid of counsel.”

The 1913 street directory showed Jerome C Martin as proprietor of the White Horse Rooms at 468 Union, and the Roma Restaurant was shown here run by Guiseppe Giovanetti. In September that year the marriage was reported in the Tacoma Times of Jerome C. Martin and Eva Macfadden, both of Seattle. Eva was from Montana, and had been married once before; and this was recorded as Jerome’s third marriage. In 1914 the White House Rooms had no proprietor listed, and Mrs Lipovsky ran a grocery store. A year later the rooms weren’t mentioned, and Mrs Lipovsky was still running her store. She was a Russian-born widow; her husband, a sheet metal worker, died of acute appendicitis at the age of 42 in 1912. In 1916 Sarah Lipovsky had moved her grocery store to 433 E Georgia, and Jerome Martin was running the grocery store here.

Jerome Martin died in Vancouver in June 1917, and was shown as married, aged 63. In 1917 and 1918 468 Union was shown as vacant, and the rooms were not mentioned by name, but their address was shown as 468½ Union. Generally the proprietor of the rooms is shown, but not the tenants. Victor Dorigo was at the address in 1921, with his son, and sister. He was shown in the directory, but not George Carr who was living here with his wife Viola, or Daniel Strickland, a lodger. Roger Victor is shown in the directory, although it’s not clear why, as he worked for the CPR.

Bizarrely, in the 1921 census Victor Dorigo was shown as being born in the USA, his parents were born in Finland, and his ethnicity was shown as Russian. He and his son spoke Italian. He was also a storekeeper, with the confectionery store on the main floor that had previously been run by Eugenio Falcioni. Before them Abraham Charkow had an egg store at 468 Union in 1919. An online biography suggests the census clerk was getting very confused. Vittorio (Victor) Dorigo was born about 1893 in Fregona, Italy, to Guiseppi Dorigo and Regina Piazza. He arrived in the Port of New York, New York, on 16 May 1914, aboard the La Provence from Le Havre, France; age 21 with his destination as Michel, British Columbia. He married Vivian Walimaki about 1920. Victor and Vivian relocated from British Columbia to Ontario, Canada, sometime before 1929.

Herbert Strickland took over in 1923, running a butchers store, then in 1925 the Union Tailor Shop run by Louis Battistoni, joined by his brother’s shoe repair business. Upstairs J Moir ran the rooms, in 1928 with V A Warn.

In the early 1930s the Ungren family moved into 466 Union (on the lane), and John Ungren was shown running the Lethbridge Meat Market under the rooms. By 1932 his wife, Dora had taken over the store space as a grocery and John ran the rooms, and by 1939 they’d swapped again, with John running a confectionery store, and Dora ran the rooms, which the family had moved into. They renamed the rooms Adora Court in the early 1940s. The name stuck, although by then the Ungren’s weren’t there. A variety of names of tenants of the store, and the proprietor of the rooms cycle through the 1940s. At the end of the war John Ivancic was running the rooms, and the store had apparently become a residential address, with the Few family living there, replaced by William and Adwina Jones a year later.

In 1948 George and Katie Kohut were running Adora Court, in 1951 William Baert became caretaker, and in 1953 the rooms became ‘Chinese’, and a year later ‘Mrs Lam Ho’ was added as proprietor. She was still here when our 1978 image was taken, but new managers took over in the 1980s. The name ‘Lucky Rooms’ was adopted in 1999, and then the New Lucky Rooms, (although there was no obvious improvement to justify the name). There are 24 units here, with shared bathrooms. Although advertised as ‘Student Residences’, the rooms let like many others in the neighbourhood, to anyone who can pay the requested rent.

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Briefly, this storage warehouse had a final blaze of glory as a sales centre. It’s seen here ten years ago, before that transformation took place. Now the location has been developed with one of the City’s ‘iconic’ residential towers. Vancouver House is justifiably memorable as it sits next to Granville Bridge on a triangular base which gradually expands to a rectangular upper part. Designed by Danish architect Bjarjke Ingles, the tower is clad in brushed steel panels with a copper inset under each balcony, and the engineering required to manage the cantilever saw some huge reinforcing steel added to the concrete skeleton.

The building that sat here before the tower was built had been here for just over 100 years before it was demolished. It was built for $50,000 by Baynes and Horie, a construction partnership that operated for several decades. The developer was one half of the partnership, William Horie, originally from Port Daniel, in Quebec. He arrived in the city in 1889, a carpenter, and teamed up with English born builder Ed Baynes a few years later. They quickly adapted to building in reinforced concrete when that technology spread in the early 1900s, and tackled ever larger jobs, as well as investing in commercial and residential buildings for themselves.

Initially this reinforced concrete building was the Canada West Auto Garage in 1920 on the insurance map, but Begg Motor Co (No. 2) in the street directory. That company had built another multi-storey garage in 1912 on West Georgia. They continued to occupy these premises until the 1930s, but in 1933 it was vacant. For a few years this was a warehouse for Dominion Furniture, but by 1944 Johnstone National Storage had moved here (seen in this 1946 image).

They also had a large multi-storey warehouse nearby on Richards Street. Over time this, like their Richards Street building, was converted to a self-storage building, still operated by Johnston. More recently, like this site, a residential tower has replaced it. New self-storage buildings have been developed in several of the remaining industrial areas outside Downtown.

Elmer Johnston was from Ontario, where his obituary was published in 1949. “Died in Vancouver General Hospital after an operation ten days previous. Survived by wife and son Harry, of Vancouver. Brother to Herbert C. Johnston, Barston, Calif.; Mrs. L. Olsen, Bremerton, Wash.; Mrs. J.A. Dutcher, Bradford, ON; Mrs. George Gardiner, Victoria; and Mrs. Rowland Pike, Vancouver. Born in Bradford in 1883. Moved to Vancouver in 1903. Founded the Johnston Storage Co. in 1913. President of Johnston Terminals Ltd., Johnston National Storage Ltd., Terminal Cartage Ltd., Birke and Wood Ltd., Brade Storage and Distributing Co. Ltd., and affiliated companies. Past president of the Vancouver Tourist Association, member of the Vancouver Kiwanis Club, past president of the Vancouver Terminal City Club, The Evergreen Playground Association, the Canadian Warehouseman’s Association, and the transportation section of the Vancouver Board of Trade.”

Secondary image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 586-4180

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Leonard Sankey came to the three-year-old Vancouver in 1889. He was a carpenter, like his older brother Frank, and first appeared in a street directory in 1891 living on Prior Street. His brother lived across the street. They were from Herefordshire. Their father was Herbert Sankey from Ludlow in Shropshire and their mother Emma Bull from Bullingham in Herefordshire. Leonard was 26 when he married Fannie (christened Frances) Robinson, who was from Nottinghamshire. The were married in Vancouver in 1893, and by the 1901 census there were already four children at home, Vera, Ira, Gladys and Harvey.

Leonard built the $1,000 house at the end, on the corner of Barnard as it was then known, (Union today) in 1904. It was finished in 1905, and the family moved in. Two years later he obtained a permit to add four more houses at the cost of $1,000 each – although they were built as a single unit. The rental building was a simplified version of the Queen Anne style of the house. They both had a complicated gable roof and projecting bays, but his house had extra details like fish scale shingles and carved corner brackets.

We eventually found the family in the 1911 census. All four children were at home, and it looks like four had been enough for them. Most of their names were spelled wrongly, (Gladis, Harvie) and the ink ran out writing ‘Sankey’, but the address confirmed it was the correct family. Leonard was still a carpenter, as he was in the 1921 census when only Harvey, who was 22, was still at home, still a student. Unusually, the family didn’t all agree about religious denominations; Harvey was listed as Baptist, his father as Methodist, and his mother as ‘Christian Science’.

The family moved, first to Grant Street, then to Parker Street, but Leonard continued to own and rent the properties, carrying out repairs in 1922 that required a permit. From 1926 to 1928 his former home was used by the Canadian Jewish Council of Women, who provided a variety of social services to the Jewish community in Strathcona. Frances died in 1937 and Leonard was 97 when he died in 1964. The houses have stayed in single ownership, and have been maintained carefully – as can be seen in our 1978 image.

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Our ‘before’ image was most likely taken in 1969, and the contemporary shot was published in February of this year. We think the image dates from the fall of 2018. The angle and elevation are, for once, almost identical. Many of the buildings standing in 1966 are still there today, but not all of them.

The far left of the image shows the Hotel Vancouver, and to the west the Burrard Building. It looks slightly different because it was re-clad in 1988. Behind it was, and is, the MacMillan Bloedel Building. In 1969, the year it was completed, it stood alone; now it’s jostled by the Royal Centre and the later phases of the Bentall Centre. In 1969 only the first two buildings had been completed, still standing today but hidden by the larger Bentall V tower across Burrard Street.

Across the street from the Hotel Vancouver was the Georgia Medical Dental Building replaced in 1991 with Cathedral Place, with a roofline that is either a copy of, or an homage to, the Hotel’s copper roof. Towards Burrard Inlet from the Bentall Centre was the 1955 Customs Building designed by CBK Van Norman, (and no longer standing) and then the Marine Building, still standing apart in 1969. Today the top of the tower is just visible, surrounded by newer office and hotel buildings – and condo towers beyond on Coal Harbour.

Closer to us, the Vancouver Block with its distinctive clock tower can still be seen, and in 1969 the cranes were starting assembly of the TD Tower, the first part of the Pacific Centre Mall. The York Hotel and Granville Mansions were still standing, although not for long as they would soon be replaced by the departmental store section of the Mall. The Bay department store still stands unchanged from it’s second iteration – although that may not be true for too many more years. The date the image was taken can be estimated from the tower apparently changing colour, towards the right edge of the picture. The Cannacord Tower was re-clad with a lighter skin of double-glazed windows while the tenants remained working inside; the work was about a third of the way down from the top in August or September 2018. Tucked into the bottom left corner of the image, the new City Library can be seen. In 1969 several blocks in this part of the city centre were surface parking lots and short parkade structures. Towards the bottom of the picture, the Kingston Hotel had one on either side; now it has a 46 storey condo tower and a 22 storey office headquarters as neighbours.

Image sources: Ted Czolowoski published in ‘Through Lion’s Gate’ in 1969, published by the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board, Trish Jewison in the Global BC helicopter, on her twitter feed 2 February 2021.

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