There aren’t too many images of the era when T Eaton’s Departmental Store took over Spencer’s on West Hastings, but here’s one, in colour. David Spencer had intended to redevelop the entire block, (like his rival Charles Woodward had further east) but as the city’s economy faltered, after he’d built the impressive new block on the corner of Richards in 1926, designed by McCarter and Nairne, rather than build anything else he incorporated existing buildings on the block into his store. So while the 1892 Bank of British North America had already been demolished for the $1m building on the corner, for a while the Molson’s Bank from 1898 was still standing. It was designed by Montreal architects Taylor and Gordon in a Romanesque style.
In between were two more modest buildings; Mahon, McFarland and Mahon’s 1899 building, designed by W T Dalton in 1898. Next door was a building developed for $30,000 in 1903 by Drysdale Stevenson Company, with Parr and Fee as architect, and T Hunter as the builder. David Spencer’s original store was behind it, on Cordova, and in 1916, after he had incorporated this building too, they became linked across the lane with a corridor designed by Thomas Hooper. It wasn’t the first building on the lot; that was the Thompson-Ogle Building from around 1888.
Eaton’s had taken over Spencers in 1948, and were here in 1957 when Arthur Collier took this picture, and then moved on to Granville Street in 1972, leaving this building to be incorporated into the Harbour Centre redevelopment by Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden in 1976. It included a Simpsons-Sears store which closed in 1987, and the building was reconfigured again as offices and SFU’s Downtown campus in 1989.
Image source City of Vancouver Archives CVA 1415-064
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Changing Vancouver 