Today this is a recently comprehensively rebuilt family home on East Georgia Street, but when it was built in 1909 the streetcars ran past 782 Harris. The builder and owner was H Hutchings, and the permit for $2,000 for a ‘Frame store & dwelling house’. In 1910 Henry Hutchings, a carpenter, was living here, and he developed quite a number of houses around the city in 1912. In 1911 he was shown in the census as living at 782 Harris with his wife, who was 43 (two years younger than Henry), both coming from Newfoundland.

His wife was christened Leah Badcock, the daughter of sealer and cod fisherman Josiah Badcock and his wife Olivia. Henry and Leah had three children at home in 1901, (when they were living a block away at 831 Harris, in a house Henry probably built in 1900, when they arrived in Vancouver). There were two daughters, Mildred and Jessie, and a son, James (shown as Douglas in subsequent census records). Mildred was born in Newfoundland in 1895, but Jessie was born in Boston, Mass. in 1896. James was born in 1899 in Vancouver.

They had another son, Mundon Josiah Hutchings, in 1903, and then Russell Hutchings in 1905, but the family had disappeared from Vancouver by 1913, and it looks like they moved to King County (Seattle) in 1912. They’re all in Seattle in 1920, with what must have been quite a surprise to the family, another son, Willard, born in 1915, when Leah was 45, and her daughter Mildred (who was still living at home) was 25.

For many years this building remained vacant, through the renaming of the street to East Georgia in 1915, until in 1917 John S McDonald, a stonecutter, moved in. He was here for a couple of years, and then the property was again vacant. In 1924 Abraham Charkow moved in with New Century Produce. Abe had run an egg store in 468 Union a few years earlier, and at 775 E Georgia in 1920. K Jacob Charkow moved in, and stayed into the 1930s. The New Century Grocery was at 784 E Georgia, and K J Charkow lived at 782. Abe Charkow ran the wholesale fruit and vegetable business, which was on West Pender. Jacob Charkow started out with a horse and buggy and then was in the egg business, and was twice president of Schara Tzedeck synagogue. His son, Samuel had been born in Poland in 1903, which is where his father, Kopel Jacob had been born in 1858, the same year as his mother, Greta.

Jacob was still here, in business, aged 75 in 1935, but the building was once more vacant in 1937. The Western Jewish Chronicle announced Kopel’s retirement. He died in 1941, at which time the new residents of this building only rated a directory entry of ‘orientals’.

By 1945 it appears that the store use was abandoned and there were two homes in the building, with S J Chow listed living at 784 and Sam Wright, an orderly at Shaughnessy hospital living at 782 with his wife, Helena. They were still listed here in 1950, now both at 782, with Rose Chow, a clerk at Yee’s Confectionary on E Hastings living at the rear of 782 E Georgia. In 1952 Harry Low, a clerk, and his wife Francis replaced the Wright family.

At some point the building became a rooming house – possibly in the early 1950s as by 1955 both 782 and 784 were shown as ‘occupied’. With only 3 units, it wasn’t large enough to be protected as an SRO, and the structure was in a notably tired state in our 1978 image, and wasn’t much better in 2017 when it was offered for sale. Mr. Hutchings would no doubt be astonished to see the back-to-the-studs renovation, and even more surprised that his $2,000 development was worth 1,000 times his initial investment, 113 years later.

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