We’re looking north on Howe from Dunsmuir in 1936. On the left is the Angelus Confectionery store, in a building dating back to at least 1889. We looked at its history in an earlier post. The corner on the left today has a 1976 fourteen storey office tower, but an earlier proposal (in 1971) would have seen a nine storey parkade, with a basement restaurant/cabaret. That project was rejected – the architect who proposed the building was Frank Musson and Associates, so it’s quite likely that they also designed the office tower that was subsequently approved, known as The Good Earth Building. While it’s a candiadate for redevelopment one day as a bigger office building, it underwent a 2006 retrofit of heating, cooling and lighting systems that saw a 32% improvement in energy efficiency – at a cost that has already been paid back today.

Down the street on the west side were (and are) a series of low-rise low density buildings which surprisingly have yet to consolidated and redeveloped. Past the Angelus Confectionery premises was an office and store designed by Dalton & Eveleigh and built in 1921 for E Bloomfield by H A Wiles. It replaced two earlier houses. The developer was probably Edgar Bloomfield, a barrister, who lived in Point Grey.

In 1912 J J Grey hired architect A E Cline to design a single storey retail store on the next lot north. John J Gray was a real estate agent who had developed other investment property in the city. Given the amount of change in the Downtown in the past century, he and Mr. Cline would probably both be rather surprised that the store is still standing today.

On the right in the 1936 picture is the Hambro Building built around 1923. Before it was built, there was a house here that was the Japanese consulate. At 572 Howe was an office & store designed by Gardiner & Mercer for J Adam in 1929, costing $45,000 to build, and in the same year R T Perry designed 540 Howe costing Branson, Brown & Co. $37,500 to develop.

Today this is the northern part of the Pacific Centre Mall, completed in 1990 with an 18 storey office tower designed by Zeidler Roberts Partnership. Beyond it is Pender Place, a pair of identical towers designed by Underwood, McKinley, Wilson & Smith and completed in 1973.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives Str N283.

0907

Advertisement

This is the Hambro Building which dates from the 1920s. In 1930, when this image was shot, A H Stephenson & Co occupied the corner unit. Before 1927, when they moved in, the Reliance Financial Corporation were here in 1926, managed by R R Knight, and a year earlier Carter’s Oriental Trading Co, managed by Miss M U Alexander, and a year earlier Radio Specialties Ltd, who seem to have been the first tenants in the new building in 1923.

Although the Hambro name is generally associated with the merchant bank founded in London by the Danish Hambo family, we haven’t been able to confirm any specific connection. Instead, Patrick Gunn tracked down the building permit to Pemberton and Sons, hiring architects Downing and Kayll and builders Hodgson, King & Marble in 1922 for this $29,000 investment. The Hambo name was only associated with the building for the first two years until 1925. Pemberton & Son (or inaccurately, Sons) were a Victoria-based real estate and insurance brokerage, founded in 1887. The Insurance part of the business moved to Vancouver in 1910, based in the Pacific Building just north of here at Howe and West Hastings, developed by W A Bauer and later known as the Pemberton Building. As the Howe and Dunsmuir building was only single storey, we assume it was purely an investment by the Pemberton’s, who also operated the Pemberton Trading Co and significant financial operations in the 1920s

By 1935 A H Stephenson were still in the building. In 1927 they were real estate agents, as they were in 1935, (although they were also insurance agents by then) E J Gibson had also moved into the building. They were stock and bond brokers, managed in 1935 by Glenn S Francis. The company seems to have been established by a Spokane ‘mining man’, and the company appears to have been involved in mining stocks. Quite what the audience were tracking on the huge blackboard in this Stuart Thompson image seemed a little puzzling, but a 1936 newspaper report from Spokane suggests an eager Vancouver audience: “To aid in the relief of business in the E J Gibson office at Vancouver B C swamped by the volume of trading, Miss R E Nolting, cashier of the Spokane office, flew by the Northwest Airlines and connections yesterday morning. She reported by telephone the office there filled and besieged by a crowd that was massed back in the street. The boom, but a few days old, was touched off by the reportedly sensational strike in Minto Gold. It extended to other issues”. Minto Gold Mines Ltd. mined the Minto Property in the Bralorne region of BC for gold, copper and lead between 1934 and 1940. Historic production was reported as 17,558 ounces of gold, 21,327 lbs. of copper and 124,421 lbs. of lead. E J Gibson also had an office in Butte, Montana, another mining centre.

Today this is the northern part of the Pacific Centre Mall, completed in 1990 with an 18 storey office tower designed by Zeidler Roberts Partnership.

Images sources: City of Vancouver Archives Bu N510 and CVA 99-4719

0680