This simple 1960s bank didn’t last very long on the prominent Granville and Robson corner. Completed in 1963, it was demolished in 2004 to be replaced with a 3-storey retail building. The corner now has an electronic billboard (the second, and larger one on the corner). Beyond it the Orillia can just be seen on Robson Street. Until it was demolished in 1985 it was a reminder that the big city retail and commercial centre had not that long ago had a row of terraced houses in this part of Robson.

The office was commissioned by the Royal Bank who hired Underwood McKinley Cameron to design it. Leonard Frank’s photography company were hired to record construction progress and the finished product. The owners of the retail building have indicated that its days may be numbered, as there potential for a significant office building on the site, an opportunity that existed when the retail was developed less than 20 years ago, but at the time demand for office space was less than it is today.

Obviously the bank wasn’t the first building here. It replaced a three storey brick faced apartment and retail building designed by T E Julian for Jonathan Rogers in 1904. In 1912 the Royal Bank of Canada carried out alterations, and moved a bank branch into the building. That closed for the redevelopment in 1961, and this building served the same function for another 40 years. The bank no longer have a presence on Granville, but there’s a branch on West Hastings Street a few blocks to the north, on the corner of the street.

Image Source: Jewish Museum and Archives LF.00793

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We looked at this block previously, but here it is again quite a couple of years earlier before the Vancouver Block made its dramatic intervention. On the right of the picture, on the corner is 792-798 Granville Street. It was built in 1904 by J Rogers – Jonathan Rogers, a developer and builder who developed the Rogers Building down the street a few years later. He hired T E Julian to design the building. In 1905 he sold it to a Calgary based businessman, and by 1906 it had tenants; Le Patourel and McRae, Druggists were at 792, the Sunset View apartments were upstairs and Joseph McTaggart, grocer was on the corner at 798. It’s likely that Mr McTaggart bought the building because in 1912 he got a permit worth $400 for repairs designed by Thomas Hooper. It’s not clear if he actually completed that work as in the same year the Royal Bank of Canada also hired Thomas Hooper to convert the building to a bank branch at a cost of $10,000, The Bank finally closed in 1961, and looked very similar then to 50 years before as this Walter E Frost shot from the Vancouver Archives shows.

 

And that’s not the end of the story on this corner. The new Future Shop didn’t appear until 2003, but in the interim another Royal Bank building appeared, that lasted under 40 years. This 1980s City Engineers photo in the Vancouver archives shows it on the left, designed in uncompromisingly contemporary style by Underwood, McKinley, Cameron and Associates and completed in 1963.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 229-09, CVA 447-345 and CVA 772-727

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