The four storey rooming house is called the Station Hotel today, although it’s been a rooming house under a variety of names for many years. It was owned by investment company Living Balance for some years, and has 32 rooms. It was recently acquired by BC Housing, the Provincial agency, to help house Vancouver’s homeless population.

It was given a permit in 1911, when Hugh Braunton designed the $25,000 investment for Albert Pausche. He ran the Horseshoe Hotel, and lived in the East End on Keefer Street. However, there seems to have been a problem with the title, as a year later lawyers published the following public notice: “NOTICE is hereby given that I shall at the expiration of one month from the date of the first publication hereof Issue an Indefeasible Title to the above mentioned lot in the name of Albert Paushe and Joseph Tapello unless In the meantime valid objection be made to me In writing by some party or parties having an Interest In the said property. The Holder of the following Documents relating to the said Lands, viz.: 1. Conveyance In Fee from Sir Donald A. Smith and Richard B. Angus to George M. Bennett. Dated 29th January, 1889. 2. A Conveyance from the said George M. Bennett to Colin Smith, Dated Ist. February, 1889.  3. A Conveyance from the said Colin Smith (by his Attorney, Geo. G McKay) to Edward White, Dated 8th November, 1889.” The initial ownership by CPR Executives isn’t surprising, but the re-trading of the same lot in the same year shows the degree of speculation in the city’s early years.

Albert was from Austria, and was 42 when he built the hotel. His wife, Louisa, was 15 years younger, and from Italy. They had a 2-year-old son, Joseph. They were both shown arriving in Canada in 1906, and they married here in 1907. Their marriage certificate shows his wife as Luigia Bari from Runnianca, Province Novara Italy. Albert had a brother, John, who also ran hotels in Vancouver, and who ran a licenced hotel in Ladysmith in 1908. Albert was 74 when he died in 1943. Louisa died in Vancouver aged 85 in 1969.

The hotel was initially rather oddly numbered because it was developed on a lot between 1020 and 1022 Main Street – and there wasn’t an even number available. Presumably with an eye to reallocating numbers on the block in future, it was numbered as 1012. That was the address of The Bonanza Rooms, initially run from 1913 by John A Gray. In 1918 Mrs S Bunnell took over. In 1920 times were hard; nobody was shown running the rooms, and Albert Pausche was working as a labourer, and his brother John as a carpenter. In 1925 George Clark was running the rooms, and Albert had become a shipwright. In 1930 H Matsumura was running the rooms, and Albert Pausche was a carpenter while his brother had become a labourer with the City. Hatsujiro Matsumura continued to run the rooms, and appeared in the Vancouver Sun in 1936, in a bizarre case where first his wife, and then he was called to give evidence in a divorce case. The Court couldn’t decide how to treat a Buddhist in terms of swearing them in; in the end it was determined that affirmation was the route to follow, and the divorce was duly granted.

In 1942 the Matsumuras would have been forced to leave Vancouver, and the rooms were renamed as the Park Hotel. In 1945 Toy Quon was manager, and a decade later Alphonse Wileyto and Harry Sherban, By the mid 1960s the building had become the Station Hotel, and became one of the many older hotels with shared bathrooms offering low-cost long-term basic accommodation.  The only mention in the press was when a 72-year old suffered smoke inhalation in 1968 when he set fire to his mattress, and was rescued by other tenants. Our image shows it in 1985.

Frequently the store on the main floor was either listed as vacant, or not even mentioned in the street directory. Today it’s home to Bodega on Main, which offers a tapas menu and with restrictions on indoor dining due to the COVID pandemic, added a patio on Main Street during the warmer months.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 790-0666

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This is an SRO building in the Downtown Eastside that displays some similar characteristics to its neighbours on either side (designed by the same architect, and built in the same year). Built in 1911 for Daniel Campbell, it was designed by Hugh Braunton with Edgell & Dixon hired to build the $30,000 investment. Completed in 1912, it was initially named the Cordova Rooms, and later the Cadillac Rooms (with the building to the east becoming the Cordova Rooms) and by 1955 The Wonder Hotel.

There were several Daniel Campbells in Vancouver, but only one was a real estate broker. Born in Ontario in 1863, he lived at 1201 Georgia with his wife Kate, who was three years younger than Daniel, and in 1911 their bookkeeper son William who was aged 17, and who had been born in the US, and arrived in Canada aged two. Daniel was a partner in the Campbell-Walker Brokerage Co with John walker (previously a clothing store owner)

Like many other real estate businesses, things went badly for Campbell-Walker as the Great war added to the recession that had already hit the economy. The 1915 Government Gazette lists a number of lots where they had failed to pay the appropriate taxes, and where they were in arrears.

Renamed as the Wonder Rooms, this property briefly achieved notoriety as one of the properties co-owned by a former pharmacist, George Wolsey, who lost his pharmacy licence for forcing residents at the buildings he owned to get their methadone prescriptions filled through his pharmacy. In 2012 a court-appointed receiver assumed control of the buildings and began hunting for prospective buyers, and Vancouver-based nonprofit Community Builders agreed to take over running the building. Sold for over a million dollars, tenants who had successfully launched a class-action lawsuit against the owners of the two dilapidated single-room-occupancy buildings in 2011 were unable to obtain their $18,000 payout as Mr Wolsey failed to show up in court, or make payment. During the lawsuit the state of the building was described. “Structurally, the building is falling apart, the fire seals are breached, the fire escapes are blocked, the toilets don’t work, there is a single shower for three floors of people.” Things are better than that these days, but the rooms no longer let at the welfare rate.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 790-2444

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We looked at the Grand Hotel (with the arched windows in the centre of the picture) in an earlier post. That’s the red building, initially designed by N S Hoffar for Thomas Cyrs in 1889 and then extended in 1903 by architect R H Bracken for T J Roberts, (both owners were originally from New Brunswick). The published history would suggest that Roberts built the hotel in 1889, which would have made him an extraordinarily young entrepreneur; he was born in 1874, so would have been only 15. That sounded so unlikely that we checked the Census records for 1891, 1901 and 1911. Unlike many early Vancouver residents who seemed to need to shave a few years off their age as time progressed, Thomas J Roberts stuck to either 1874 or 1875 as his birth date, and was shown as aged 17 in 1891. In the census Thomas and his 12-year-old sister, Mary, were living with their uncle and his wife. The uncle was hotel keeper Thomas Cyrs, so we now think Thomas Cyrs built the Grand, and Thomas Roberts took over in 1897 (at a more reasonable age of 23) and completed the expansion of the hotel in 1903. (We’ve revised the Grand Hotel post to reflect this).

In 1901 Thomas Roberts was living in the Granville Hotel (the earlier name for The Grand), with over 30 boarders and the hotel’s staff. In 1911 he had moved to 1635 Barclay Street with his wife, Pauline (born in Ontario, and five years younger) and their two children, three-year-old Pauline and one-year-old Mary. The family had three domestics: Jennie Larson was 22 and from Sweden, Dorothy Parkes was 14, from England, and so was John Shepherd (aged 18).

In 1908 Roberts commissioned the Roberts block, a 3-storey commercial building on Pender Street. In 1911 he redeveloped the building next to the Grand Hotel (to the east). Hugh Braunton was the architect, and it cost $48,000. In 1913 Roberts was considered to be a legitimate businessman – which wasn’t true of all the hotel keepers in the city; he featured in ‘Northern Who’s Who and Why’ – a biographical volume.

When it was first opened the new building had the Vancouver Clothing Co as a tenant, along with A Waddington, who specialized in overalls, the poolroom of McEwen & Knox, Fredericks & Skatigno (who were barbers) and Jarus & Weinrobe (who sold clothing, and had another store at 56 Water St). In 1915 there were two barber’s shops – one was run by William Brown, the other by Vincent Lacolla. The other occupants in the building were the Van Pickle Co and Taisho Printing Co. Three years later there was one barber remaining, V Lacolla, a clothing store (H Cooper), and Beaver Interurban Auto Transfer occupied the rest of the building.

Thomas J Roberts was killed in a dramatic fashion in September 1918 while watching a card game. He was with seven others in what was described as a ‘gambling resort’ on Jervis Street when a masked armed robber attempted to rob the party. The ‘Daily World’ described it as ‘the most sensational holdup which has occurred in tbe city in recent years’. The ‘Times Colonist’ published a longer version of the story. “Thomas J. Roberts, proprietor of the Grand Hotel, and one of the best known of the city’s pioneers, was shot and killed on Saturday evening by a masked robber with whom he had grappled to avoid handing over a diamond ring which the bandit had demanded. The tragedy occurred shortly before 11o’clock at 1304 Jervis Street near the corner of Harwood, a fairly large residence, surrounded by a thick screen of trees.

A second victim of two of the robber’s six shots was Henry Eames, aged about 50, manager of an upcoast logging camp. He is so seriously wounded that slim hopes are entertained for his recovery.

The police have one suspect under arrest the most important evidence so far obtained is from A. Harradine, a taxi driver who conveyed a fare to Broughton Street; a block away from the scene of the murder, on Saturday night the man left the taxi with orders to await his return. He came back in ten minutes, became much agitated when the driver had difficulty in starting the car and finally was conveyed downtown, where he disappeared in the alleyway alongside the Alcazar Hotel, on Dunsmuir Street east of Homer.

The house where the shooting took place is occupied by Oscar Olesen, his housekeeper, Mrs. McLennon, and her children. Eight men were in the drawing-room when the robber’s unheralded arrival took place. Five or six members of the party were playing a card game. They and several neighborhood friends were in the habit of coming in once or twice a week to spend the evening at cards.

Story of Shooting

The robber first demanded a ring from O. Jay, who handed over a three-stone ruby which encircled one of his fingers. Then the robber turned to Roberts with: “Now, hand over that ring,” motioning to a large solitaire which the hotel man wore on the third finger of his left hand. It happened that this ring fitted very tightly Mr. Roberts made an effort —real or assumed—to remove the ring and failed. Then he held out his hand with the words: “Here, take it off yourself, if you want it so badly.” Suiting the action to the words, which were the last he uttered, Mr. Roberts stepped towards the highwayman.

The robber reached forward and in a fraction of a second the men had grappled and the robber began to shoot. Cartridges found later showed the weapon to be a .33 calibre automatic. At least five probably six shots were fired. The first went wild across the room and crashed a window. Another went through the floor. Another struck Mr. Roberts head just in front of the ear and he slipped to the floor. A fourth shot pierced the opposite wall near the ceiling and two others struck Eames.

Mr. Roberts was one of the most familiar figures amongst the younger business men of the city. He was 47 years of age; coming to Vancouver from New Brunswick thirty years ago. He has been continuously with the hotel of which in recent years he was proprietor. He leaves a wife and two daughters of 10 and 8. His brother, Harry Roberts, is proprietor of the Beaver Transfer Company. Two sisters live in British Columbia, Mrs. T. Mambrick, of Comox and Mrs. Roy W. Brown. Mr. Roberts death is the first break in a family of thirteen.

J.F. McCabe, held as a suspect in the Jervis Street murder case, appeared before the magistrate today and was remanded until September 16, McCabe was in court on August 14 last, when according to the police records, he was fined $26 and costs for having morphine in his possession.”

The ‘Coquitlamite’ blog has extensive details of the crime. The main suspect in the crime was soon identified “Known now to the Vancouver police as George Layton or George Leaf, the man was arrested here and convicted under the latter name, with a number of aliases, in November, 1914, on a charge of stealing $40 from John Oleson; and with being in possession of instruments for housebreaking. He served a six months term and, the local records show, subsequently he was convicted at Calgary of theft and was sentenced to two years In the penitentiary, from which institution he could have been released only a comparatively short time ago.”

Police combed the Pitt River area where he was reported to have been seen, but he wasn’t found. In October 1919 the Victoria press reported that he had died in Los Angeles. “Last week at Los Angeles In a running gun fight with police officers a burglar was wounded. To avoid capture he deliberately shot himself with his own revolver, and was dead when the pursuing policemen reached his side. The desperado was known in Los Angeles under the name of Nyland, but has been identified as Lehtenen or Leaf. The identification was accomplished through photo and finger prints of Leaf as supplied to the Vancouver police by the Victoria authorities shortly after the Vancouver gambling house murder. 

Leaf, alias Samson, alias Anderson, alias Necthern, alias Lehtenen, was arrested here on November 17, 1914, for theft of $40 from the person of John Olson. He was dismissed on that charge, but upon the charge of being in possession of burglar’s tools he was sentenced to six months. The next heard of him was at Calgary, where he was sentenced for theft. 

Leaf’s photo and finger prints were taken when he was sentenced here, and when the Vancouver police were searching for him for his alleged participation in the shooting of Roberts and Eamen, the Victoria records were supplied. Circulars bearing his photo and finger print classification were circulated far and near, and it was by that means that the Los Angeles police made their identification of the desperado Nyland.”

In 1920 Vincent Lacolla was still cutting hair, and we suspect that C H Jones had already moved from a  warehouse on Alexander Street – although the street numbering gets a bit confused in the directory. In 1928 when our Vancouver Public Library image was taken, C H Jones were definitely in the building. They made sails and other canvas goods, and they stayed until 1930 when the Canada Western Cordage Company moved in. The made rope and twine, and retained an office here until the early 1970s. Their occupation explains the name that condominiums were given when they were built in 2009 ‘ Cordage’, designed by Acton Ostry Architects.

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The first hotel at this location was built by Ebenezer Brown, a wine merchant in New Westminster, and it was originally named the Granville Hotel (after Granville Townsite to the east of here) in the 1860s. He sold it to Joe Mannion and Billy Jones in 1874, and in about 1879 it was rebuilt. Mannion ran it for several years, and the published history says it was then sold on to Tom Cyrs in 1886 (although Cyrs was running it for several years before this, and at least one source suggests the sale was earlier). Cyrs lost the structure when it burned down with the rest of the city, but he quickly had it rebuilt (that’s the new wooden building on the left with the gentlemen in the bowler hats in front, in 1887). The street directory for 1888 shows that R Campbell was proprietor of the Granville, and Tom Cyrs wasn’t in town (although he was listed as owning the hotel in 1887), so he may have briefly left Vancouver. In 1889 Tom Cyrs is once again shown owning the Granville, and T Roberts is listed as a bartender a situation that continues through to 1891, where the census for that year reveals that Thomas Roberts was a 17-year-old bartender living with his uncle, Thomas Cyrs, a hotel keeper (with Mrs Cyrs, an adopted son, Arthur and Mary Roberts, Thomas’s sister). In 1892 both men are listed as proprietor of the Granville.

The ‘official’ version of the building’s history says Cyrs sold the hotel in 1889 to Thomas Roberts. When we calculated Mr. Roberts age, that seemed a little unlikely. Born in 1874, he was 13 when he arrived in the city, and would have been aged 15 on acquiring the hotel. If our estimate is correct, Thomas Joseph (‘Tommy’) Roberts was still only 18 when he became joint owner of the Granville. Both men are listed as proprietors until 1896; in 1897 Thomas Cyrs moved to a house on Dufferin Street and Thomas Roberts became listed as sole proprietor (at the age of 23). This situation prevailed through the early 1900s, although Thomas Cyrs is still shown as a ‘hotel keeper’ – but no hotel is listed, and the Granville continues to be identified with Thomas Roberts.

The owner, (we assume Thomas Cyrs), had N S Hoffar redesign the hotel as a brick structure, although he retained the Granville name, in 1889. Initially it operated as a reasonably small hotel with ancillary space at the rear (likely the stables); the 1901 census shows 25-year-old Thomas Roberts as head of the household of 33 boarders (many from Ontario, some from England and some from the USA, a couple from New Brunswick and George StGeorge from Quebec). There were four live-in staff (a bartender, clerk, chambermaid and domestic) and his 19-year-old sister, Emily Roberts.

In 1903 Thomas Roberts commissioned a large, four-storey addition that was built at a cost of $25,000; this addition filled the entire footprint of the lot and was designed by R H Bracken. The hotel then switched name to the Grand Hotel. Thomas Cyrs died in 1907 aged 55. There are a number of stories told to Major Matthews about Cyrs that make it clear he was quite a character. William Edwards identified him as the first man to be arrested following the fire – two days later (several other stories relate that Mr. Cyrs considered himself handy with his fists). “They tied him to a chair at first, but he kicked over the chair; then they chained him to the tree; it was on the opposite side of Carrall Street to the tent they used for a City Hall. The old tree had been badly damaged in the fire. Which reminds me of a thing which would look very queer now. I have seen Tom Cyrs walking up the middle of Water Street with a buggy whip over his shoulder, and a horse, just a loose horse—no head rope or anything—following him.”

The architect of the hotel extension appeared for the first time in the street Directory in 1903, living in the Granville Hotel. He was still there a year later, with an office on Hastings. Thomas Bracken lived in the same lodgings for those same years, but had gone by 1905. Richard H Bracken continued to live in the same hotel until 1910 when he seems to have been working for Seattle architect E W Houghton, who designed a number of projects in the city including a theatre. In 1911 Bracken was living in West Vancouver, aged 34, and we know from that census he was born in England. We don’t know what work he was doing as we can’t decipher the census clerk’s handwriting – but it doesn’t look like it was architect.

Tommy Roberts owned and operated the hotel for many years, and invested in other real estate including the Roberts Block on West Pender Street in 1908 and the building adjacent to the Grand (now known as the Cordage – to the left in the photo) in 1911 (designed by Hugh Braunton and built at a cost of $48,000). Roberts died suddenly at age forty-two in 1918, murdered in the West End with another man when a masked bandit attempted to hold-up a poker game.

The Grand soldiered on for many years; our main image shows it in 1929, but the upper floors were effectively abandoned by the 1970s (as this image from around 1970 suggests). In 2008 Acton Ostry designed the rehabilitation of the facades and extra density above and behind three of the four buildings on this part of Water Street, including the Grand, with condos over retail uses (the Grand getting one extra brick-faced floor).

Image sources: City of Vancouver archives Hot N8, CVA 780-512 and Str N58

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Fred McElroy and his wife, Orlena, first appear in Vancouver in 1901 when they were both about 28 years old. Both were born in the US; Fred was barman at the Balmoral Hotel, and while we know Orlena was one of nine children, born in King County in Washington, we haven’t been able to trace Fred’s origins. In 1901 they were living in Mrs Alameda McCluskey’s rooming house at 139 1/2 Hastings Street.

In 1903 Fred partnered with a Mr Smith as proprietors of the Horseshoe Hotel at 83 E Hastings. Two years later Fred’s partner was John Scuitto, and Mrs McElroy was running a rooming house at 75 E Hastings. Scuitto had previously run the City Hotel, and before that the Klondike Hotel in 1899. Before that he had been a grocer, and in 1888 a baker. Reports of his death in the 1901 San Francisco press had obviously been greatly exaggerated. A year later Fred was running the Horseshoe restaurant at 75 E Hastings as well as the hotel (on his own), while he and his wife lived at 75 which she was still running as a rooming house.

In 1910 Fred had moved up in the world. He was living at 1763 Nelson Street, a house he had obtained a permit to build in 1909. The Horseshoe Hotel had new proprietors and Fred was in real estate. He was still there in 1914, although by then it’s getting confusing as there are two other Frederick McElroys listed in town; one a bartender (whose name is really Frank) and one who owned the Clarence Hotel.

In 1911 (when fortunately there was only one F McElroy in town) a building permit for 123 E Cordova was issued with the owner being F McElroy. It was for a 3 storey brick & stone hotel, designed by architect Hugh Braunton, it cost $50,000 and was called the Madrona Rooms. (Fred had also developed a store and dwelling house on Victoria Drive in 1910).

In 1913 the rooms were run by Mrs Katherine Newell, who was still in charge in 1917 after the McElroys had left Vancouver. We know that by 1916 Fred and Orlena were in Seattle because Orlena’s father, John S. Alexander, died that year. He was a former Klondike gold miner who had moved to a very young Seattle, having taken the Oregon Trail to Portland and then the Schooner ‘Exact’ to reach the new city. He was Sheriff and Assessor of Island County, went to the Legislature in 1881 and was appointed collector of customs at Seattle in 1889. At least two other married daughters ended up in the Vancouver area.

By 1923 Fred was in real estate in San Francisco (coincidentally, perhaps, another Frederick McElroy was managing a large hotel in the same city in the same year), and Fred and Orlena were still there in the 1930 census. We haven’t been able to trace Fred’s activities after that, but Orlena lived until 1952 when she was living in Los Angeles. By 1944 the Madrona Rooms were renamed the Rancho Rooms and later the Rancho Hotel.

Our image must have been taken around 1984. The City’s parking garage was completed in mid 1981, and the Rancho Hotel was still standing then, just behind the ‘P’ sign for the parkade entrance, used as the Salvation Army’s Harbour Lights. A replacement complex, designed by Davidson & Yuen, was completed on the site in 1987. The facility offers a meal service, detox and non-market housing for Downtown Eastside residents.

Image souce: part of City of Vancouver Archives CVA 772-479

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