This house was probably first constructed in 1888 and was initially home to Albert Lindsay, who was a checker in the CPR freight sheds. That could make it the oldest house still standing outside Downtown, but we’re almost certain the house was moved from the lot to the east in 1911. There were two more houses to the the west (to the right) of this one, and all three houses were moved in 1910, and 1911. They were all then owned by ‘J J Smith’, and we assume they were shifted one lot to the west, to eventually make space for an apartment building where this house originally stood (on the left of the picture) Presumably it was easier to move the houses one lot over, rather than leaving one in place and moving the other around it.
When the houses were moved they retained the same street address, even though they were on a different lot, and a new number was given to the apartment building. Albert Lindsay wasn’t here long – it would have been an inconvenient location for Downtown where his work was located. There werre no street numbers in the early directories, but in 1891 James Lindsay, a carpenter was living on Sixth Avenue, (but not Albert Lindsay), and with no street address identified.
The numbering here was allocated in the 1890s, and in 1895 we think that for a while this was 24 W 6th, when H W Maynard was resident. By 1901 Harry W Maynard was shown at 144 East 6th, and ‘Henry Wilfred Maynard’ was listed as agent for the Hamilton Powder Co. a year later. When he died in 1948, in West Vancouver, the death notice said he originally settled in Mount Pleasant in 1887, and had worked for the Powder Co (which made blasting powder for the mining industry). He had three brothers in California, but that’s not a clue to his origins, as he was from Wales, son of Lieut-Colonel Edmund Gilling Maynard. Within a few years he moved his wife and three daughters to a new home on West 14th Avenue.
By 1911 this was the home of James I Smith, the superintendent of the R C P Mill. That was the Royal City Planing Mill, which was down the hill at the foot of Carrall Street on False Creek (before that stretch of the creek, east of Main, was filled in for the new railway terminus and yards). The mill was part of British Columbia Mills, Timber and Trading Company. (Some records, including permits had J J Smith, but we’re pretty certain it was J I Smith).
James Israel Smith was born in Quebec in 1864, and married Mary Young in 1888 in Vermont. They had three sons, Wellington, (born in Ontario in 1889), Wesley (in New Westminster in 1890) and Percy in Vancouver in 1896. That year James Smith was a millwright, living in Mount Pleasant on West 10th. In 1901 he had moved to 2150 Westminster Road, which was a small house just to the east of here, almost on the corner of Main and East 6th. By 1908 ‘James J Smith’ was living here, superintendent of the planing mill, but in 1912 it was corrected to James I Smith, who by that point was superintendent at Hastings Saw Mill, and listed as living at 144 East 6th. He was still here in 1919, but in the early 1920s moved to Burnaby, which is where he was living when he died in 1933.
By 1932 the house had been split in two, with one unit addressed as 144 1/2. Later it became a rooming house, which was the case when it was here in 1974. A year earlier a room was available for $100 a month. It was for sale in 1983, “7 rentals. $17,000 gross. Unbelievable at $112,000.” A 1-bed basement suite was $300 a month in 1988.
Since 2014 it’s been home to artist’s collective The James Black Gallery ‘a queer led arts and culture hub dedicated to giving a voice to emerging artists in Vancouver, providing space for community engagement, and experimental multidisciplinary art practices’.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archines CVA 1095-03466
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Changing Vancouver 