This is yet another West End apartment building that is nearly a century old. It was developed by C S Gustafsom, and the architect was Henry Holdsby Simmonds. It cost $60,000 to build in 1927, and the owner also built it.

We’ve seen other buildings developed by Carl Gustafson, who was Swedish. He built houses in the West End as early as 1903, and developed the Clifton Hotel on Granville Street in 1910, and The Bilmore on Thurlow in 1928.

Carl Sidof Gustafson was born in Hinneryd, Kronoberg, Sweden in 1874. The newspapers reported that he married Hannah Johnston in 1904 at the bride’s family home on Homer Street. Actually, legally she was Hanna Carolina Johansdotter, born in Hallingeberg, Kalmar, Sweden, and two years younger than Carl. In the 1911 census Carl was 36, having arrived in Canada in 1890, living with his wife Hannah and their three sons and their domestic servant, and a lodger. Two more children followed, in 1912 and 1918. Mr. Gustafson was an early motorist, with BC Licence #2844.

Carl Gustafson often appeared in the local news buying and selling properties, and obtaining permits for development. The Buckingham was noted in 1927 as a two-storey brick veneered building.

The building is mentioned for the usual letting opportunities (both furnished and unfurnished suites were available), deaths, marriages and sales. In 1929 one resident’s experience suggested the state of the economy was tough, and that Vancouver was far from crime-free. “Winston Morcroft, 16, of 925 Cardero street, was held up shortly after 7 pm. Tuesday at Barclay and Burrard streets by two men and robbed of 75 cents, he reported to the police. He said that one man pressed the muzzle of a revolver against his side while the other searched his pockets.”

In 1935 Eddie File briefly rented here, but soon had his home raided by police. He was convicted of living off the earnings of prostitution. He was alleged to have a half share in the Panama Hotel in Victoria, which was being used as a brothel. His wife was identified as someone who owned a house of ill repute in Gold River – the house had to be physically moved because of its proximity to the school.

Also in 1935: “The efforts of a marooned Vancouver couple to stave off hunger and cold for fifty hours were related today when Mr. and Mrs. Arthur M. Caesar, 925 Cardero returned to the city after being stranded In their automobile and a trappers’ cabin between Hope and Chilliwack from 2 p.m. Tuesday to 4 p.m. Thursday. “We were snowed In while trying to get through to Hope,” Mrs. Caesar said today, “and for the first nineteen hours we kept warm by running the car motor for half-hour periods, which supplied warmth through the car heater. “We had some cold turkey, bread and butter, and some coffee with rum in it. If it hadn’t been for the small lunch, which we made last until Thursday, and for the car heater, we would have been in a bad way. After the first nineteen hours the couple took refuge in a cabin a quarter of a mile up the mountain from where their car was stranded”

In 1937 Frank Forshaw was held up at gunpoint in his apartment here, when a stranger buzzed his front door, claiming to be delivering a parcel. The parcel turned out to contain an automatic pistol, that the assailant held onto, before making off with $100.

The building was reported sold for $78,500 in 1946. In May that year Mrs Rita Forshaw had her suite ransacked, and $2,000 of jewels stolen, including a platinum brooch set with diamonds, valued at $1,000. A month later Mrs W. C. Cooper answered the door one morning to two men who asked for a room. She slammed the door in their faces. The men then held up Harold Crooks, of 1601 Barclay, in front of his home. “One of the thugs shoved a gun in his back, Crooks stated, and said: “O.K. Buddy, stick-em-up, let’s have your money.” Mr. Crooks fought, and escaped from the men.

In 1947 John Heffernan was living here, when he was arrested and charged with dangerous driving after striking a parked car in the 1000 block of Granville Street

The building doesn’t appear to have featured in any further crime stories. It was sold in 2000, and had been refurbished in 1989 when studios were $550 and large 1-bed units were $695. Our image is from 1985. The rent in the late 1980s was quite a bit more than in 1973, when the 1-bed suites were $140. In 1960 they were $75 (and up).

Image source City of Vancouver Archives CVA 786-5.10

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There’s not a lot of change to this building in over 40 years, since our 1978 image was taken. The house here was built by builder Robert Maxwell for Dr. Thomas Jeffs, whose home was initially addressed as 341 East Hastings, although his medical practice (in partnership with Dr. W B McKechnie) was on Cambie Street. Dr. Jeffs spent $1,800 on building his home in 1901.

William Jeffs and Margaret Weir brought two of their family to Canada from Ireland: James, born in 1839 and Isaac. Once arrived here, John was born in 1844 in Ontario, George in 1846 (who died in Vancouver), Sarah and Thomas, who was aged 4 in the 1861 census. William was a farmer, and his four eldest sons were shown in 1861 as labourers. The early census suggests Thomas was born around 1857 or 1858, and his death in 1923 aged 65 shows that he was born in Queensboro, Ontario, in 1858, (although other records suggest 1857). By 1871 Isaac had become a clerk, and only George (who was known by his middle name, Armour), was farming with his father. Thomas attended Toronto University to obtain his MD, and initially practiced medicine in Ontario.

Thomas Jeffs married Sarah Waller in 1882, in Hastings Ontario, and three years later, Charles Edward Jeffs was born. Sarah died in November 1887. In 1891 Thomas was in Peterborough, in Ontario with a wife called Minnie, aged 28 (so born around 1863) shown two years older than her husband, (recorded as William), a physician and surgeon. There were no children shown, but Francis, William’s younger brother was in the household, aged 18 and working as a druggist.

Thomas W Jeffs, a physician, and Mary Couen were recorded being married in York, Toronto, Ontario on June 29 1895, with W McKechnie and Annie Couen as witnesses. Thomas was shown born in 1858 and Mary in 1864. Mary’s parents were shown as Charles Couen, and Martha Reid. Mary’s father, Charles Cowan married Martha Reid in 1855, in Simcoe in Ontario. They had a daughter, Annie, in 1868 who married William Boyd McKechnie. (Annie died in Spallumeheen in 1948). They also had a son, Charles in 1865 and a daughter, Martha in 1861 (who also died in Vancouver, in 1934).

Thomas and Minnie (Mary) Jeffs moved to Cumberland in BC in the year they married, then to Revelstoke, and the family were first recorded in Vancouver in the 1899-1900 directory, with the Cambie surgery, and living on Denman. A year later they had moved to 522 Gore, a few blocks from here, and Dr. McKechnie, who had practiced in Revelstoke from 1896 to 1900 had joined the practice. We assume that the doctor’s wives were sisters.

For the 1901 census there were some seriously inaccurate ages recorded; it said Mary was 11 years younger than Thomas (showing him born in 1860, and her in 1871). Thomas’s son, Charles, was now living with them, born in 1888 in Ontario. The couple added William to the family in 1896 and Mary in 1900. In the 1911 census Thomas’s wife was called Minnie, and she was two years older than him, now suggesting 1864, (so knocking six years off his age) with her born in 1866 (so two years less than reality). William was 14 and Mary 10. (When Charles died in Seattle in 1941, in Seattle, his mother was recorded as Minnie Jeffs).

This block of East Hastings was oddly numbered in the early 1900s so this was 341 in 1901 (the year Dr. Jeffs built the house, and was listed that year in the street directory), but by 1911 had been renumbered to 389. By 1903 a second Dr. McKechnie had arrived in Vancouver, Dr. R E McKechnie, who was in partnership with Dr. Tunstall, and as far as we can tell, unrelated.

Dr. Jeffs was a director of the Orange Hall, elected as an alderman in 1906, Police Commissioner in 1907 and was appointed coroner in 1909, a position he held for many years. In 1907 he built a big house on Salisbury Drive that cost $6,000, and the family lived there until 1920. (That house was moved on its site, and restored a few years ago). He built a new home on Charles Street in 1922, but died in 1923.

The Ing Suey Sun Tong Association purchased this house on East Hastings and Dunlevy through donations from members in 1920. It looks as if the store was added in 1921; a permit was approved for $2,000 of alterations that year, designed by H H Simmonds. Wa Young and Co made minor repairs in the 1920s; they ran the grocers in the store. The family association still own the building, although their members are increasingly aged and infirm. In the 1950s new arrivals to Canada could share a dormitory on the upper floor for $3 a month – up to 20 people lived here. Today you’re more likely to find a game of mahjong in progress.

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This is another Mount Pleasant industrial building, built in 1942 as the Cemco Electrical Manufacturing Company Factory. According to the recently published heritage statement for the building “Cemco commissioned the factory to house its expanding electronics business which supplied equipment for ships being constructed in local shipyards. Not much is known about the company, as is the case with many industries during the War which were subject to a certain amount of secrecy and security. Cemco remained at the site for a couple of years after the War ended, and then ceased to exist. Until recently, the building was occupied by N. Jefferson Ltd., a family owned textile supplier which has been operating since 1926 and continues to do so at a new location”

Cemco weren’t as mysterious as this suggests, and they didn’t disappear after the war. They had been in operation since 1934, in the Mount Pleasant area, with S Darnborough as Managing Director. Before this new factory was built they were at 165 W 4th Ave. S Darnborough was Sidney, (although he was really T S Darnborough), and before Cemco he was president of Canadian Electrical Manufacturing Co (which would be CEMCO’s precursor), with a home on Osler in Shaughnessy. Before CEMCO, in the 1920s, Sid Darnborough was an electrical contractor, living on West 8th Avenue.

The company were still operating from this E 5th address in 1949, with Sid still running the company, having moved to University Boulevard. They were here in the mid 1950s but by then Sid had retired and B W Ball had taken over as President of the company. A year earlier they had expanded eastwards by adding a new factory in Granby, Ontario. At the time they were described as specializing in switchgear for industrial uses. They also made electrical instruments, street light fixtures “and many other products of a similar nature for industrial and commercial use”. The 1943 image of the factory floor shows what looks a lot like light fittings being assembled by a workforce with a high proportion of female workers.

A little more insight about the company is contained in a 1946 court case where the company’s salesman, Peter Van Snellenberg, sued for wrongful dismissal after discovery that he had added commission on the sales tax payable on a few of the orders he had obtained. He was dismissed in 1943 (the year our images were shot), so although the company has been described as ‘building radar and radio equipment for ships being built for the war’ (which they may have been doing), they were also selling their products on the open market. In 1958 the Federal Pacific Electric Company of Newark New Jersey acquired Cemco, where it was described as “engaged in manufacture and sale of electrical switchgear, air circuit breakers, air switches, load break switches, fusible breakers, cable terminal potheads and related apparatus for the distribution and control of electricity”.

The Cemco Factory was designed by Australian-born architect H.H. Simmonds, and used pour-in-place construction that retained the marks of the formwork. It supposed heritage value earned it a reprieve from redevelopment, but also permitted a larger office project (yet to commence) to be built behind the retained walls.

CVA 586-1783 and  CVA 586-1784

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We’ve seen one building on this end of the west side of the 900 block of Granville Street in an earlier post – the Vermilyea Block (painted cream these days) – the fourth building along. Beyond it is a pair of warehouse-like buildings that today are Tom Lee Music. They’re a Dalton and Eveleigh design for C H Wilson, and so were once known as the Wilson Block.

On the corner (and just showing on the right of the picture) is an early rooming house. We’re reasonably certain this is another Parr and Fee building. A Granville and Smithe corner site was granted a building permit in 1906 for McCaulay & Nicolls, and those were still the owners of this building in 1915 and 1916 when two sets of repairs were carried out. Today they’re known as the Gresham Hotel, and they are non-market housing, converted from Single Occupancy Rooms  in 1993. When it was first built they were called the Gresham Apartments, and they don’t seem to have been occupied until 1909. The 1912 insurance map for some reason mislabeled the building as the Gresman Apartments. The City Drug Store were the first tenants in the corner retail unit – in 1967 it was Electronic World, selling TVs and tape Recorders.

The developers,  Macaulay & Nicolls, were insurance and real estate agents. We looked at John P. Nicoll’s history when we featured his house on Seaton Street. Charles H Macaulay was from Nova Scotia, born into a family that left Scotland in the late 1700s. He was part of the Canadian Pacific development team, working for the railway from 1887. In the same year he partnered with John Nicoll, 1898, he married his wife Ethel, and they had four children, Donald, Douglas, Margaret and John. As well as being a member of the Board of Trade and a Freemason, Charles was a member of the Terminal City, Shaughnessy Heights Golf Club, Jericho Country Club and the Canadian Club.

Next door was once another rooming house, the Henley Rooms, built for Mr Musgrove in 1910, and also designed by Parr and Fee (although with a traditional sash arrangement in bay windows, rather than the centre-hung design they often favoured). Baynes and Horie built the $18,000 property. We don’t know who Mr Musgrove was – there were only two people in the city  with that name at the time, and neither seem a likely candidate for an $18,000 investment. The rooms went through a lot of changing management – in 1911 they were run by Mrs. Maud Sherman, an American who had arrived the year before the 1911 Census and who only one lodger that year, Edith Cochran who had also arrived from the USA in 1910 and was listed as having no occupation. In 1912 the rooms were run by Mrs. Maud Ogle, in 1913 John Pausche took over, replaced by Norman Andison in 1915, Paul Parent in 1916 and Thomas Dyde in 1918, who finally provided stable management through the early 1920s. The building was demolished to be replaced in 1993 with the smaller building there today designed by Gower, Yeung & Associates. In 1967 it featured Mr. Mike’s $1.49 char broiled steaks.

Next door was the Studio Theatre, designed by H H Simmonds in 1948. It was one of his last designs, and he had been the architect for a series of theatres (really cinemas) from the early 1920s. It was still the Studio when this 1967 image was shot, (showing The Graduate), but not too long after it became the Eve, then the Lyric, and after that the Towne Cinema (with a protest outside the showing of Bob Guccione’s Caligula) and finally the Paradise Cinema, before it closed and fell into disrepair. Buying a liquor licence that once belonged to the infamous Pony’s Cabaret in the Downtown Eastside, David Kershaw and his partners transferred it to Granville and then began renovating the building as the Tonic Nightclub. More recently it became the oddly named Joe’s Apartment (which was still a nightclub, despite the name). Earlier this year the establishment once again reverted to the Studio name, with a record store and live music venue combined, and a fabulously faithful replica of the original 1940s sign.

Image Source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 780-53

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This 1928 Apartment building was a bit of a mystery. All we were able to find was that the architect might have been ‘Simmonds’ – H H Simmonds who practiced in the city for forty years. Then, thanks to a tip from the Heritage Vancouver Society (who are adding more and more building permits to their database) we were able to confirm the architect was indeed H H Simmonds, and the that developer was C S Gustafson, who spent $80,000 to develop it. Carl Gustafson was a builder (and the builder of this project) who had built houses in the West End as early as 1903, and developed the Clifton Hotel on Granville Street in 1910. In 1911 36-year-old Carl was identified by the census as Swedish (having arrived in 1890), living with his wife Hannah and their three sons and their domestic servant, and a lodger.

The building permit was issued in December 1928, and was shown in the street directory as ‘new apartment building’ in 1929, and occupied in 1930 The two fourth floor tenants were Claude Irons, the manager of the Burroughs Adding Machine Co and Laurent Maclean, a clerk with Customs. There’s no earlier building listed at this address on Thurlow – but that’s because it was on the corner with Barclay and the house that was there before was listed as 1100 Barclay. This 1955 Vancouver Public Library image shows the building has remained pretty much unchanged in appearance over six decades.

From 1898, for twenty years, the house on this site (designed by William Blackmore) was the home of George I Wilson, President of the Coast Steamship Co, a Scotsman who first arrived in Vancouver in 1887 in the dry goods trade and then made his fortune in the canning business (although in 1900 he was listed as a broker, with an office in the Flack Block). In 1920 Mrs C Parkinson was listed as occupant of the house here, but so too were clerk J J Morley, Robert Norman, an industrial surveyor, F M Robinson, another clerk with the S C Railway and Alex Wood, the local manager with the Rat Portage Lumber Co (whose wife visited Toronto that year). In the Daily World in 1920 Mrs. C Parkinson who lived here was holidaying at Seaton Lake in the Lillooet Valley. The newspaper also reported  that Marion G Buller, who lived at the house, registered a new Chevrolet Tourer from here. We assume that this was a very classy multi-occupied rooming house. In 1923 Mrs Nellie Rudd was listed as the occupant and in 1927 and 1928 James Pickford, a salesman lived at the house until it was replaced with the apartment building.

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