We saw the building on the left of the image in its first incarnation as The Vancouver Athletic Club. By the 1980s when this picture was taken, it had been messed about with a lot, and no longer used as an athletics club. Probably designed and built by Albert Cline in 1906, it was remodelled in 1919 by the Navy League of Canada who spent $15,000 on the work, with further minor changes in 1925 designed by Honeyman & Curtis. The military continued to use the premises through to 1945 in various guises, ending up with the Navy League Seamen’s Club.

For a while it was the BC Institute of Music and Drama (in 1950) with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers having their offices here. From 1951 it was known as the Dunsmuir Auditorium, and by 1955 a whole series of unions were also based in the building – the International Union of Mine & Smelter Workers, the Association of Heat & Frost Insulators & Asbestos Workers, the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 213, (who owned the building in the early 1960s), the Police Federal Labor Union Local 122, the Union of Operating Engineers Local 115, and the Pile Drivers, Bridge Wharf & Dock Builders Union.

The auditorium was used for plays, a billiards championship, a broadcast of the Hebrew Christian Hour in 1956, showing films about Mexico in 1959, and Japan and France in 1960. The hall became the home of the Vancouver Opera Association in 1969; in 1971 auditions for ‘The King and I’ to be performed at Malkin Bowl were held here. In 1982 the site was sold (by expropriation) to BC Transit for $1.75 million so that the SkyTrain tunnel could be build underneath. The building still had a basement with showers and a swimming pool (filled with files, props and stage sets). It was probably a welcome move, as the Opera Association had an awful 1977 season with poor attendance and sizeable cost overruns, leading to a significant deficit.

Next door Hall & Wallace hired Bedford Davidson to design and build a machine shop in 1909 at a cost of $21,000.  (The permit said $4,000, but the newspaper report noted the larger sum). They were a wagon company, with an earlier carriage works at the corner of Pender and Abbott. The company built an earlier $2,000 carriage shop on Beatty Street in 1905, probably on this property. They were frequently advertising for blacksmiths, carpenters and carriage painters. James A Wallace had the Columbia Carriage Works at 50 East Hastings in 1900, and James W Hall was partnered with John Alexander McRae in a rival business at 38 West Hastings, two of perhaps seven or eight carriage building businesses in the city at the turn of the century. By 1910 there were just two remaining, and Hall & Wallace was one of them.

According to the 1901 census James W Hall was born in 1864 in Ontario, although in 1911 he admitted to 1861. His wife Margaret also said she was 37, but a decade later became 51, and had been born in 1859. They had three sons, Howard, Percy and Ralph, (the only one born in BC, in 1895). James had married Margaret Dixon in Albion in Peel in Ontario in 1886, and Howard was born in 1888 in Sandhill, in Peel District (and died in Mission in 1981). Percy was born in the same place three years later, and his mother was shown as Margaret Dixon when he died in Victoria in 1961. Ralph died in Vancouver in 1975.

In 1909 the ‘gasoline launch’ Ariadne caught fire in Coal Harbour and burned to the waterline, “severely injuring her owner, J W Hall”. James William Hall was 88, and widowed when he died in 1950.

James A Wallace was listed as a blacksmith in 1901, aged 33 (born on January 1 1868) and also from Ontario. He was married to Maria, who had come to Canada in 1879, when she was aged 4, from Cuba, West Indies. They had a 1-year-old son, William B Wallace. The 1911 census showed William was also 3 years older, born in 1865 (and still a blacksmith). There were two more children in the family, Lester and Melvin. When they married in Vancouver in 1898 Maria’s birthplace was listed as Corratillo, Cuba, and her full name was Maria Esperanza Augustina Reed, (showing her mother’s name, Elizabeth Reed rather than her father, William Dane). It looks as if James was in Lytton in 1891, working as a blacksmith.

James Alexander Wallace died in 1944, when his birthplace was listed as Bonville, South Stormont, Stormont Dundas and Glengarry, Ontario, and Maria was 83 when she died in Burnaby in 1958, (where curiously, he father was listed as William Reed, and her mother as Joan Clarkson).

Hall and Wallace shifted from building carriages pulled by horses to making bodywork for vehicles. In 1913 they were advertising the bodies they were supplying on ‘Indiana’ truck chassis, and in 1917 they showed a picture of a hearse built for S Bowell of New Westminster.

In 1920 it was announced that the business had been sold to F W Lott of Seattle. He was described as an experienced paint and varnish expert. It looks as if the sale fell through: the business name didn’t change name, and ran an advertisement in 1922 when drivers switched from the left, to the right hand side of the road.

The company had their safe broken open in 1927 when ‘amateur criminals’ found a small sum of money inside. The firm advertised for someone experienced in fender straightening in 1928, and not long after there was another break-in when an electric drill was stolen. That year the directory had “HALL & WALLACE, AUTOMOBILE WORKS. Jas. W. Hall, Jas. A. Wallace. Auto Bodies, Truck and Delivery Bodies, Painting and Duco Finishing, Wrecked and Damaged Cars Repaired.” Percy Hall was the accountant in 1929, but wasn’t listed in 1930, and his brothers Ralph and Melvin appear to have had jobs as drivers.

The business had closed by 1930. James Wallace became proprietor of Broadway Confectionery, and James W Hall was retired. In 1936 he was proprietor of the Rockcliffe Apartments on West 10th, and James Wallace had apparently also retired. The motor works was home to the Catelli Macaroni Products Corporation – as a packing line and warehouse. There was a strike in 1948, and soon after the business moved out. The office of the National Employment Service opened later in 1948, and in 1958 Ernest Bird, no fixed address, tossed a rock through the window, and then gave himself up to the police. He was granted the winter accommodation he had been looking for (after more five similar offences) and was sentenced to six months jail. He had done the same thing a year earlier, telling the arresting officers he had no job, no money, and nowhere to sleep. He got a six month sentence that year, as well. In 1963 it was announced that the Employment Office would move to the new Federal Building at 125 East 10th Avenue. The building was offered for lease, and Kelly’s Records moved in, with their warehouse and mail order centre here, and seven stores around BC.

In 1994 the site was redeveloped as the HA Simons Building, which morphed into the Seimens Building and then the Amec Building, and now Wood Canada, as the engineering business were taken over and amalgamated into ever-larger companies. It is also home to architect Stantec Consulting, who took over the building’s designers, Aitken Wreglesworth Associates. The corner cantilevers out to allow the building’s foundations to miss the tunnel for the SkyTrain which angles across the site from the station on Beatty Street, and picks up the abandoned Canadian Pacific rail tunnel further west. The tunnel was originally cut in 1931, and allowed the trains from Waterfront Station to be moved to the Drake Street railyards to be cleaned, supplied and made ready for the trip back to the east. Before it was built, full scale steam trains could block the Downtown streets they crossed for up to 20 minutes. Eventually CP’s use ceased in 1979.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 772-117

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Here’s the remaining southern end of Granville Street’s 1100 block. In this 1928 image there’s a Royal Bank branch on the corner of the street. It was there three years later, when we looked at its history in an earlier post. The corner building was designed and built by Bedford Davidson for P Burns & Co at a cost of $5,000 in 1916. The West End Meat Market was part of the meat empire controlled by Pat Burns, and there had been an earlier store here for several years. Four years later builders Coffin & McClennan carried out $500 of repairs for the Royal Bank of Canada – who were the tenants on the corner from when the building was constructed in 1916. In 1952 the building was replaced with a bigger bank building, possibly designed by Mercer and Mercer (the bank’s preferred local architects of the day). The building is still standing, but not as a bank. For many years it was a Chinese restaurant, painted pink, although it’s been repainted green very recently.

There are two very similar two-storey buildings to the north. Both were constructed in the early 1900s when the permits have been lost. They appear around 1909, when Madame Jane De Gendron, a dressmaker was at 1183 Granville, Gordon Baird sold hardware next door at 1181, and the upper floor was at 1179 was vacant. The Depot for Christian Literature was at 1175. 1169 (upstairs) was shown as vacant

The single storey building was designed by Sharp and Thompson for F Cockshult in 1923, built by Baynes and Horie for $4,000. With a name like that, you’d think it would be easy to trace the developer. He certainly didn’t live in Vancouver, but someone with that name; Frank Cockshult, was recorded crossing into the US from Canada in 1909. Ho crossed again several times after that, but always as Frank Cochshutt, which is how he was recorded in the census as well. He lived in Brantford, Ontario, where he was involved in the family business; a very successful agricultural equipment company. The family certainly visited Vancouver – in 1930 The Vancouver Sun recorded “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Cockshutt of Brantford, who have been holidaying In California, are at the Hotel Vancouver en route home.” Why he would build a single storey retail store here is a mystery. It certainly wasn’t to open a showroom for the company wares – it was first occupied by the West End Floral Co, then the Roselawn Floral Co. Here’s another view of the same buildings, looking south rather than north, taken in 1981. It shows that the single storey building was still a florists. Today it’s split between a donair café and a Vape store (replacing the tattoo store in the ‘after’ shot we took a couple of years ago).

The next two storey building also appears (as a single storey building) around 1908, when and Halpins Grocery was at 1167. A $500 permit was taken out by L D Mitchell to build “Offices/Stores; one-storey brick building” in 1915. As there was already a store here, we assume that the modest value suggests an addition or alteration. The second floor must have been added later, although BC Assessment seem to think the building dates back to 1905. Today it’s vacant, having been a an unauthorized cannabis retail store before regulation limited their numbers.

There’s an approved development permit to replace all the building from the corner to the Clifton Hotel with a seven storey residential building, but the developer seems to be in no hurry to build it, and is offering several currently vacant units for rent.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 99-4505 and CVA 779-W03.21

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This is the corner of Nelson and Thurlow in 1957. We haven’t been able to identify who developed the three (undoubtedly speculatively built) houses, but we posted the picture because it shows how even long-established parks were once something else. There were in fact four homes, in a row, then a lane. The were numbered as 1025, (off the picture to the right), 1029, 1033 and 1037, and they first appear in 1901, with Sidney M Young living on the left, John Damer, a traveller, in the middle and Joseph Paul, a watchmaker on the right. Only John Damer was still here a year later, supporting our theory that they were rental properties. He wasn’t in the city before moving here, so isn’t in the 1901 census. Mrs Grant Hall moved in on the right, but didn’t stick around, and in 1903 there was another new occupant – and one we do know something about. Bedford Davidson moved in, a builder and sometimes architect, who developed houses, apartments and commercial buildings across the city. He stayed here for a couple of years, and John Damer was still next door, with J M Graham, a secretary in the house on the right.

Mr. Davidson moved here from a variety of eastside addesses, where he was initially inaccurately recorded as Batford Davidson. The census in 1901 got his name right, and had him lodging with Rachel Urquhart, a widow who had a rooming house on East Hastings. We don’t know if Mr Davidson developed the properties – it would have been an ambitious undertaking for a 25 year old from Nova Scotia, but not impossible. (In fact, earlier census records when Bedford was still at home with his parents in Amherst Shore, and then Tidnish, in Nova Scotia, show he was aged 28, and the 1901 census was incorrect). He developed a series of increasingly expensive properties from 1901 to 1903, several on East Hastings and then hiring G W Grant as architect of at least three business blocks on the 500 block of Granville, that he had presumably also bought the sites for. (By 1911 the family had moved to Broughton Street, Bedford, his wife Evangeline, also from Nova Scotia, two daughters and a baby son. Ten years later all the children were still attending school, and there were two more additions to the family. Bedford Davidson died in 1963, aged 91).

In 1911 the house on the left was home to John B Williamson, a merchant, who had lived there for several years. John was from Ontario, and was married to Martha, who was from England (arriving in 1883 as a two year old). They had a baby daughter, Jean, and Gertrude Rothwell, an Ontario-born relative. John was partners in Williamson Jenkins Co, who sold glass and crockery wholesale. In the middle was Frederick F Jones (according to the street directories) and Albert Lloyd, and his wife May, according to the census. Albert had arrived in Canada only three years earlier, and was a cashier, but May was from PEI. On the left the street directory recorded ‘Aurilous J Mangold’. The census had ‘Aurel’, for the 53 year old Frenchman, whose occupation was listed as ‘Book’. He was shown as a steward at the Terminal Club in the street directory, but The Daily World showed him running the Conservative Investment Co. on Pender Street. He offered investors an opportunity to invest in West End rental property. A year later the street directory had Mrs M Mangold as resident (in 1911, 38-year-old Mary Mangold, from England had three children at home, Lillian, 17, Aurel, 12 and Josephine, who was three). In 1913 she had moved to Kerrisdale, and was listed as a widow. Lillian was a stenographer. In 1917 Aurel Mangold (the son) was mentioned in a news story when gave evidence at an inquiry, having  helped lift a car off the body of Mrs Dixon, who was run over and killed by a Ford driven by Mrs. Muriel Johnson, outside the Birks Building. Soon afterwards the family had moved from Vancouver, apparently to New York, where Aurel became an ophthalmologist.

From the early 1950s the City of Vancouver, through the Board of Parks, acquired houses in two blocks to create a new urban park for the West End (which had a growing population, and no inland green space). By the 1970s all the houses on this block had been demolished, and the lane was incorporated into the park. The adjacent block, which was also to be demolished, was spared and became the Mole Hill Housing Co-op. Development funds were used in 2007 to restore and renew the park.

Image source: City of Vancouver archives Bu P508.97

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This image is, according to the City of Vancouver Archives, from around 1926. We place it a few years later, towards the end of 1929 or early in 1930. That’s because there’s a building seen in the picture that’s still standing today. Up to 1928 there were houses pretty much the entire block face, but in 1929 1035 Seymour was vacant, and in 1930 it was home to Bearing Supply House Ltd – seen on the left of the picture. The company’s Vancouver operation had previously been located in the heart of the business district on the 600 block of Howe Street. There was a 1929 permit for 1041 Seymour, to build a $10,000, building for D S McLachlan. Bedford Davidson was the builder, and probably the designer too.

Next door, to the north, are two houses, both dating back to the early 1900s. They’re both standing today, although incorporated into the complex that today is the Penthouse Club. The building to the north of that dates from 1912, although it too had a house as a basis. That year H W Forsyth & Co spent $700 to build “Dwelling/house; one-storey frame warehouse”.  The odd thing is that no such business shows up in the street directory around that period, (or any other records) and the occupant in 1913 was a contractor, Harold Burdett.

Aaron Chapman has chronicled the changing fortunes of the property for the past 77 years. “The Filippone family bought the land the Penthouse sits on in 1941, and began building the building that still exists there today. What originally housed the operations for their trucking and taxi business also found space for their Eagle Time Athletic Club, turning the building into somewhat of a community centre for over 500 local kids, with the Filippones sponsoring boxing, soccer teams, and baseball. The club already had its own boxing star with Jimmy Filippone a two time B.C. Golden Gloves champion. After the Second World War, in 1947 the Filippones began to expand the building and the business into what would eventually become the nightclub.”

So far this block has seen little development, but there are two underutilized sites (including the 1929 building) likely to see development soon. Here’s one of them – the parking lot beyond the club that has remained a vacant surface lot since before 1981. Whether the venerable Penthouse Club itself will ever disappear is less predictable. The Filippone family have apparently rejected countless lucrative offers for the site, and seem content to continue to operate one of the last outposts of a bygone era.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 99-2251 and CVA 779-E03.07A

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Where the Best Western Hotel now stands, in around 1921 there was yet another motoring related business. Rand and Carter sold Goodyear Tires, and for a very short time the Maple Leaf Motor Truck. It appeared – and disappeared – here in the early 1920s, although it was announced that the company had been acquired in December 1920 for $20,000. The odd thing is that the truck company claimed to be based in Montreal, but the only place that there’s any mention of the company is in Vancouver newspapers, and BC Government notification of the registration of the business in 1921. There’s one advertisement for the truck in ‘Canada Industrial’ magazine, also in 1921, which confirms the Montreal location.

A Windsor blacksmith, Moise L Menard produced a series of trucks in the 1910s in his wagon works from one-ton to three-and-a-half ton models. in 1916 Menard built an aerial ladder fire truck for the Walkerville fire department. He sold out to the Maple Leaf Manufacturing Co. of Montreal in 1920. ‘Canadian Machinery’ explained the story “The Maple Leaf Manufacturing Co., Ltd., has recently been incorporated to carry on the manufacture of commercial motor trucks. The personnel of the directorate is identical with that of the Machinery and Munitions, Ltd., which for four years carried on extensive operations in the making of munitions, at plants in Lachine and Sorel. The former plant has been taken over by the new company, and the Windsor plant and general interests of the Menard Motor Truck Co., which has been engaged in motor truck manufacture since 1908, has also been acquired. The Maple Leaf Company will manufacture standard motor trucks and all truck parts, for both domestic and export trade. It is expected that a big business will be built up with the group of countries with which Canada enjoys favored agreements.” The company seems to have disappeared as a truck builder fairly quickly; in 1923 they were still listed on Granville Street along with Rand Tires, and Reo Motors Ltd had been added to the mix; a year layer maple Leaf Trucks were no longer offered here.

The building was newly built. In 1919 Howard & Davis of the Rand Tire Co had hired architect and builder Bedford Davidson to build the $10,000 building – apparently (from the street directory) the first to be constructed on the lot, although the building permit references ‘repairs’. By 1930 Bowell-McDonald Motors were in the building, and five year later the building seems to have disappeared, with nothing shown on this corner at all. That’s not quite accurate: the address moves down the block  (from 1301 to 1313 Granville), and the building was completely repurposed, initially as the Trianon Balllroom, later the Howden Ballroom. The ballroom use lasted through to 1994, the year that Green Day, Beck and GWAR played the hall (on separate bills, obviously). In 1997 the new Best Western Hotel was completed, designed by Gomberoff Policier Bell, and incorporating an Elk’s Lodge when it first opened.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA Trans N18

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Here’s another image of Granville Street; the west side of the 500 block looking north from Dunsmuir in 1910 in a Vancouver Public Library image. On the corner is the Tunstall Block, built in 1902 by D Saul for Dr Simon Tunstall at a cost of $22,000, designed by G W Grant. In 1909 he added two more floors at an additional cost of $20,000. That suggests that our Vancouver Public Library image isn’t as dated from 1910, but probably from a year earlier. The next three-storey building to the south was another designed by G W Grant for Bedford Davidson in 1903, at a cost of $10,000.

The biggest building on this end of the block (two doors down from the Tunstall), was the four-storey Gordon Drysdale block, built for his dry goods business in 1907 and designed by Hooper and Watkins with an addition in 1912 by S B Birds. Next door to the north, the smaller building was known as the Anderson block, dating from before 1888 when there’s an Archives image of the building standing alone on the street, with the fire brigade filling their fire engine with water outside. At the time C D Rand and Co, the real estate company, operated from the building.

The fifth building down is the Inglis Reid Building, another G W Grant design for builder and Investor Bedford Davidson, who also owned and built the building beside it in 1902. It was effectively rebuilt by J Reid when he moved in, with McCarter Nairne designing the $22,000 work. The steel frame is where in 1909 Miss Spencer decided to replace her eight year old 3-storey building with an 8-storey steel framed office, designed by E W Houghton of Seattle.

None of the buildings on this side of the street are still standing: today this is part of the northern block of the Pacific Centre Mall, designed by Zeidler Roberts Partnership and completed in 1990. In 2007 the corner of the block had a radical redesign by Janson Goldstein of New York for the new Holt Renfrew store, incorporating panels of slumped glass in the design.

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George Dawson developed this building on the corner of Main and Hastings in 1911, and we first looked at its history in 2012. At that time we looked at the background of the builder and ‘architect’, Bedford Davidson. We didn’t really examine the background of the man who paid the $180,000 to develop it. George was not a cannery agent as described in the Historic Building Statement; rather, as Dawson & Buttimer, George was an active owner and developer of canneries. Fred Buttimer (actually Alfred) was his younger brother-in-law, and briefly, when the 1911 census was conducted, the two families were sharing a house on Burnaby Street while the Buttimer’s were waiting for their new house to be completed.

They both came from New Brunswick, and George looked after the books and sales, while Fred managed the production. Fred was said to be short, quiet and even tempered, while George was large, distinguished looking and generally silent unless aroused to fury – which was said to occur quite often. In 1893 with their partner George Wilson they acquired their first cannery, in Steveston, which they called Brunswick #1. Their second, Brunswick Cannery #2. was opened in 1897 at Canoe Pass in Delta. Brunswick #3 was in the Rivers Inlet District. They sold all three canneries to the B C Packer’s Association in 1902.

In 1903, now as Buttimer and Dawson, (or Dawson and Buttimer – there was no consistency to the company name) they established a new cannery on Alberni Inlet on Vancouver Island (which they sold to Wallace Fisheries in 1911). In 1905 they bought a cannery on Harlock Island, opposite Steveston, a year later they built the Kildala Cannery in Rivers Inlet, described in the New Westminster Daily News as being constructed with the aid of “an immense pile-driver”, and then in 1907 another called the Manitou Cannery in Northern BC. The also bought the Carlisle Cannery on the Skeena River in 1905. B C Packers were unhappy with the increased completion, especially as part of the agreement to buy the Brunswick Company in 1902 suggested that Buttimer and Dawson would not compete. Not only did they compete; they did it with the money B C Packers had paid them for their earlier investments.

George Dawson was from Bathurst, married to Vina Buttimer, 16 years younger, and they had one son, David. We haven’t found a great deal about George, although his marriage was noted in the Times Colonist in 1895. For some reason it took place in Winnipeg “George W. Dawson, canner, of Vancouver, was wedded here today to Miss Vina Buttimer, of Bathurst, N. B. who had journeyed half way across the continent to meet her lover.” There are almost no references to George’s involvement in civic life, although know he was involved in local politics because he was the seconder nominating Walter Hepburn when he stood for the 1916 election for mayor. (Hepburn wasn’t elected). George died in 1935, aged 83. Vina lived on until 1965, when she was 96.

Alfred Buttimer (and we suspect George Dawson) continued to be involved in the fishing industry until 1925, when their remaining cannery interests were sold to B.C. Packers. Alfred devoted his time to Vancouver real estate, and died in 1934.

In 1940, when our image was taken, this was still an office building. It stayed as offices until 1985, when it was converted to residential use, designed by Adolph Ingre and Associates. Today it’s non-market rental housing run by the Affordable Housing Society.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives Bu P296

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The building on the right of this 1981 image is also on our previous image. It dates from the mid 1950s, and  replaced a $10,000 single storey building designed and built by Bedford Davidson for the Pioneer Auto & Carriage Company in 1920. They were a firm of auto body builders run my William Alexander, Michael McLean and William Benson, and seem to have developed from the Pioneer Carriage and Shoeing Co, shifting from horses to horseless carriages.

The decorative building to the north was built in 1913, a $30,000 office and store designed by W F Gardiner for the North West Trust Co., Ltd. It too was part of Vancouver’s expansive motordom, occupied initially with the showrooms of the Albion Motor Co, (a Scottish vehicle manufacturer), the Albion Motor Express  and the United Auto Agency of BC offices.

Off in the distance on the left is the first building on the block, the Pioneer Steam Laundry, built in 1908 and still standing today. While the steam laundry building remains, the rest of the block here is taken up by The Savoy, a 2000 condo tower designed by Hancock, Bruckner Eng + Wright.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 779-E09.11

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The corner building on Granville and Davie was a bank for many years. The first buildings here were two storeys high, built around 1901, and we haven’t found an image of them. The corner was initially the Braden Meat Market, and from 1908 to 1916 the corner store was the West End Meat Market. In 1916 the building in the image above was designed and built by Bedford Davidson for P Burns & Co at a cost of $5,000. The West End Meat Market was part of the meat empire controlled by Pat Burns. Four years later builders Coffin & McClennan carried out $500 of repairs for the Royal Bank of Canada – who were the tenants from when the building was constructed.

The building didn’t really change its appearance from when it was built until 1931, when our Vancouver Public Library image was taken. We have an image that shows the left hand side of the building in 1916, and the only significant difference was the lack of any awnings.

We assume that at some point the Bank acquired the building; in 1952 they replaced it with a two-storey structure (that’s still standing today). We haven’t identified the architect, but the most likely candidates are Mercer and Mercer, the father and son partnership who had a contract with the bank to design new branches throughout the province. Our 1970s image shows the bank still in operation; in more recent years it has been a Chinese restaurant, but that’s also likely to change soon as there’s an approved replacement residential and retail building that will be seven storeys.

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Here’s another image showing how little some parts of the city have changed in over 50 years. Our ‘before’ picture was taken in 1961; the ‘after’ on New Years Day 2015. While the buildings haven’t necessarily changed much, the use they’re put to isn’t necessarily the same. The Ford building on the immediate right of the picture became low-cost rental housing in 1985, having been developed as an office building called the Dawson Building, built by Bedford Davidson. On the extreme left of the frame is the Carnegie Library which the sign shows was still the City’s Museum in the early 1960s. Heading west down East Hastings the first tall building is the Maple Hotel – looking really good in both pictures for a building dating from 1912 (designed by Parr McKenzie and Day for James Borland). In between the two pictures the building lost its cornice as our earlier post showed, but now a BC Housing restoration has given the entire building a new lease of life.

The two low buildings to the west are from 1904 and 1912; the second by Parr and Fee, who also designed the Balmoral Hotel next door for J K Sutherland, also in 1912. Beyond that are two small buildings dating from 1919 and 1920. The three-storey building beyond that is identified on the insurance maps as the ‘Crowe and Wilson Building’. We’ve looked at its history (and the buildings beyond) when we saw the same block looking east from Columbia Street. Today it’s home to Insite and Onsite, but it was a rooming house called the West Inn in 1961, having changed from the Western Sporting Club when a police raid closed down an extensive gambling operation. The ‘W’ of Woodwards can be seen in both pictures – today it’s a new sign is a slightly different location.

Image source: City of Vancouver archives CVA 2011-068.09

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