We’ve seen this building before – although in that post it was called the International Hotel (and it was about 40 years later). This VPL image is supposedly from 1900, but we think it’s more likely to be 1901 when the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall visited the city and toured in procession down Cordova – clearly the hotel and theatre were dressed up for something.

We covered a great deal of the history of the theatre and the hotel in the earlier post. What we had failed to note was that the hotel went through what were described as ‘major alterations’ to the Hotel Quinte in 1906, designed by Dalton & Eveleigh. The same architects also designed $4,250 worth of alteration in 1911 for G W Crotts, the owner, who had also had an architect called E Dare design $1,000 of alterations a year earlier. J Williams also altered the hotel basement in 1911 at a cost of $2,000, so quite a bit of work was carried out in a relatively short time.

George W Crotts seems to have avoided the 1911 Census (or been recorded with a different spelling), but he was in partnership with his brother, Charles, who was aged 29 and American, working as a broker in the real estate company of Crotts & Crotts based in office on West Hastings in 1911. Almost certainly they originally came from North Carolina –  the name is unusual enough to limit the options, and the last time they appear in a Vancouver directory is 1916. In 1920 a George W Crotts was resident in Los Angeles, and a George W Crotts was born in Canada in 1913 whose father was similarly called George W, so from this we know that George’s wife was called Sirona, and there was a 16 year gap between George junior and his sister, Mary, who had been born in North Carolina.

They seem to have done well, both Charles and George were first in the city in 1908; George was a millwright; in 1909 Charles was a machinist and George a woodworker in the CPR shops, and in 1910 Charles was in real estate, but George was still in the CPR workshops. George died in Los Angeles in 1931, and Sirona, (who was also born in North Carolina) also died there in 1958 when she was aged 78.

Today the rebuilt Henriquez Partners Gastown parkade occupies the space, with the Vancouver Film School moving into the space in the lower and basement floors briefly occupied by the Storyeum historical experience.

0231

Advertisement