Trish Jewison, in the Global traffic helicopter, regularly posts amazing images of Vancouver on her twitter feed, and we borrow them and try to match them to historic aerial images. Here’s a second look at Yaletown and the area of North False Creek posted in April 2022, (our first from the CTV’s Chopper 9 from three years ago is here). The before image is in the Vancouver Public Library collection, and was taken in 1953.
In the foreground are some of the Concord Pacific towers that replaced Expo 86, developed on the former CP railyard in Yaletown. Because the Roundhouse (now the Community Centre) lines up, it’s possible to see that the marina is actually carved out of the former railyard land. (The red roof of the remaining part of the roundhouse is just visible among the towers.) The railyard was on previously filled land in 1953, so the bay only partly recreates the former coastline, which originally ran all the way back to Beatty Street.
In the background, in 1953, The new Granville Bridge was just being completed, with the loops down to Pacific Street still under construction. In 2023 it’s almost invisible because of all the buildings around it, but those loops are being removed and replaced with normal roads as part of the grid, creating space to build four more residential towers, including non-market housing.
The remaining parts of Downtown South have shifted from modest one and two storey buildings to residential towers, often with a commercial base. The exception is the three blocks of Yaletown, the warehouse district released for development by the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1900s, and almost completely built out in just five years. Most of those warehouse structures are still standing, but as we’ve seen over a series of posts here, today some are apartments, others are office buildings. Most have two floors of retail or restaurant use (reflecting the full floor change in elevation coming down the hill from the west, and the retention of the rail loading docks, allowing extensive covered patios).
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Changing Vancouver 