These two modest rooming houses are likely to be redeveloped very soon as a new non-market housing project. The Jay Rooms on the corner date back to around 1894, while The Vet’s Rooms to the south were a 1902 investment by Baynes & Horie, who developed, designed and built the brick-fronted frame building for $2,500. Their corner neighbour saw a remodelling of the earlier building in 1913 when it was owned by Edward McFeely, who hired W T Whiteway to design the $5,000 work built by E Cox. (Coincidentally, Baynes & Horie had carried out alterations to the first building on the corner, by adding a kitchen in 1903).

We don’t know who originally developed the corner, but in 1894 The Mountain View Boarding House appeared in the street directory on Oppenheimer Street, run by Mrs. Thomas. A year later the address switched to East Cordova, and she was named as Mrs William Thomas. In 1901 she was still running the boarding house, identified in the census as Mary E Thomas, with five lodgers, and her daughter, Martha, living with her. She was shown as aged 59, and her daughter 23, and both were from Ontario. In 1891 the family lived in New Westminster. There were four other children at home – Martha was the youngest – and William was a sailor.

In 1911 she had given up running the boarding house and was a widow, living with her son-in-law, Edward Odlum, on Grant Street. He was only 9 years younger than Mary, but his wife, Matilda was 34. (Matilda was Martha’s middle name). Edward’s first wife, Mary, had died in Tokyo in 1888 aged 34, leaving Edward with four young children including newborn twins.

Edgar Baynes and William Horie were partners in a construction business they started in 1893, and were responsible for constructing over a hundred of the city’s buildings, with a number of them investments for their personal portfolio of property. 307 Westminster Avenue was a relatively small building for them, and by 1915 real estate mogul William Holden had bought the building. Ed McFeely, who was a partner in McLennan, McFeely and Company Limited, the city’s most successful importer of hardware and building supplies. He continued to spend money on alterations to the corner building, including $150 in 1926. He was from Ontario, and was in Vancouver before the 1886 fire. He was immensely successful in business, and died in 1928 one month after retiring, a year after his partner in business, Robert McLennan.

The original corner building was home in 1896 to G Claasen’s grocery store and in 1902 to Clarke & Rogerson, grocers, and Ben Christensen, a shoemaker. Upstairs the Mountain View Hotel was on two floors, with a corner turret, and addressed as 170 E Cordova. A year later Ben’s store was vacant, and Walter Merkley, who sold dry goods had moved into the new store next door. In 1906 Jacob Parker had a second-hand store on the corner, J F Munro, a tailor was next door, and T Galloway’s stationery store was in the brick building with Mrs. W. J. Ore running the furnished rooms upstairs.

In 1914 The Atlas Cafe occupied the corner, the Northern Oil Co were next door, and Walter Galloway was running the stationery store, and apparently lived upstairs, with no mention of rooms above 307. However, over the cafe, the Mountain View had become the Stockholm Rooms which were addressed as 172 E Cordova. By 1930 they had become the Phoenix Rooms, over The Main Clothing Store, the Star Barber Shop, and next door the People’s Mission. In 1936 R Reusch ran the rooms, and in 1938 the Yamane Rooms were operated by Kamech and Umeko Yamane until 1942. There was a strong Japanese presence on the block; photographer Motozo Toyama and his Columbia Studio were located on that side of the street until 1942, when the Japanese community were forced to leave the coast. He was the community’s go to photographer. In 1943 the rooms were The Victor Rooms, and by 1950 they were The Jay Rooms. J Zbarsky’s clothing store was on the corner, the barbers had remained for over two decades, and next door Mrs. J Thomson ran a rooming house over the Main Cleaners.

In 1972 there was a fire, leaving the building damaged, (our image above) and the top floor was removed. Our main 1978 image shows York’s Restaurant on the corner, and Eddie’s next door – a lock repairer and saw filer, with the Vet’s Rooms upstairs. Since then Vic’s restaurant, which occupied the corner (and was featured in the DaVinci TV series), reopened as a Blenz coffee shop, then closed again and is now a free clothing store run by Atira Women’s Resource Society. Eddie’s is, for now, a convenience store, and a vacant unit.

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McLennan, McFeely and Company Limited were the city’s most successful importer of hardware and building supplies at the turn of the 20th century. In 1906 they built themselves a massive new warehouse on the corner of Columbia and East Cordova,  hiring E E  Blackmore to design it; (the son of William Blackmore who designed the adjacent Commercial Block).

Both McLennan and McFeely were in the city before the 1886 fire: Robert Purves McLennan was from Pictou, Nova Scotia and had run a hardware store in River John before moving to Winnipeg in 1882 aged 21. Edward John McFeely was from Lindsay, Ontario, was two years younger than McLennan and also sought his fortune in Winnipeg in 1882. The future partners met there and worked together, but the boom ended quickly (his biography calls it ‘the real estate reaction’) and he headed to Minneapolis. McLennan had gone to Victoria in 1884, establishing an ornamental ironwork and tin cornice company that expanded rapidly. He invited McFeely to join him in business and they bought a lot on Powell Street in Vancouver to build a warehouse. The frame was up when the fire destroyed the town, but apparently the lumber it was built from was still wet, having been floated in a raft, so it didn’t burn and they were able to complete it quickly (covering it with corrugated iron) and cash in on the building frenzy that followed. During the 1890s the firm’s focus shifter from roofing and tinsmithing to wholesaling. In 1891 McLennan had 13 people working with him in Victoria and McFeely 17 in Vancouver.

Further buildings followed; in 1889 their business ‘stoves, tinsmiths and plumbers’ was in a 3 storey building designed for them in 1887 by Elmer Fisher, on the 100 block of Cordova, the main business street of the day. It was apparently extensively covered with the company’s own decorative metal trim,and the city’s library was for a while in a rented room upstairs. In 1900 GW Grant designed a new warehouse on Pender, and in 1905 E E Blackmore and W T Whiteway designed a new warehouse on Water Street that was completed, but never occupied by the company. Hardware and Merchandising magazine explained “McLennan, McFeely Company, Vancouver, have leased the block that Contractor J. McLuckie is erecting on the corner of Water and Abbott streets to the Fairbanks Company. The block will be three stories high, and the estimated cost is $30,000. It will have a private siding from the C. P. R. and, being right on the waterfront, is well located.” Instead they commissioned this massive (150,000 square feet) warehouse on Cordova at Columbia in 1906. In fact, they commissioned two buildings for this site – Parr and Fee designed the building on the left for Cordova and Columbia at some time before 1900 – as far as we know it was never built.

Our top image shows the building in 1910; the one below shows it in 1920. Both McLennan and McFeely became important members of the city’s business establishment. Both were associated with the Board of Trade, and Robert McLennan was also on the School Board, a member of the Board of Governors of UBC and President of the Bank of Vancouver. Edward McFeely owned a motor yacht, the ‘Jolly Mac’ in which he cruised the BC Coast. Robert McLellan owed a 330 acre farm on Gambier Island with extensive orchards and a prize dairy herd. McFeely was mostly responsible for running the Vancouver operation; McLellan supervised the Yukon operations for five years from 1898, his family joining him every summer. He even became mayor of Dawson for a year in 1903 (having sold the retail side of the business in 1902), but in 1904 the remaining operations were sold and McLennan returned to Vancouver. A third partner, E G Prior, was added in the late 1920s to create  McLennan, McFeely and Prior Limited as the company continued to expand after Robert McLennan’s death.

Edward McFeely was married in Victoria in 1889 and there were six children. Robert McLennan married in Nova Scotia in 1887 and had ten children, including one born in Dawson City in the Yukon. McLennan died in 1927, and McFeely in 1928, one month after retiring.

In the 1970s the Koret clothing company from San Francisco occupied the building, and the residential conversion completed in 2006 still bears their name. The Koret Lofts has 118 live-work units with an extra floor added to the building with the conversion and restoration designed by Simon Bonnettemaker at Gower Yeung and Associates.

Image sources: City of Vancouver Archives Str P419 and CVA 99 – 3275

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