On the left side, on the corner with West Pender is Pender Place, relatively newly built when this 1981 image was shot. Completed in 1973, it’s a pair of identical towers designed by Underwood, McKinley, Wilson & Smith. We’ve seen the other tower (on the corner of West Pender and Granville Street) in earlier posts, including when it was the location of the main post office, and in the 1930s.

The previous building on the corner of Howe Street was only two storeys high. Beside it, across the lane at 540 Howe Street was another modest building, replaced in 1953 by a new office building for Canada Trust designed by McCarter and Nairne. In 1964 the Stock Exchange acquired the building, and after alterations to create a trading floor, moved in, although not for very long. It was redeveloped as part of the northern part of Pacific Centre Mall, completed in 1990. The new building, including a parkade entrance, is actually shorter on this part of the block than its predecessor.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives  CVA 779-W01.29

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Here’s the corner of Pender and Howe in 1947. That’s the Pender Hall upstairs, built in 1903 to the design of W T Whiteway for James Reid, who built it for $19,000. These days it’s another mid-height (15-storey) office building from 1978, designed by Underwood, McKinley, Wilson and Smith.

James Reid was probably Senator James Reid, born in Quebec and an early developer of Quesnel, who was a partner in the steamship Charlotte (his wife’s name), that was the only stern wheeler on the Upper Fraser River. Reid’s business also included saw and flour mills, mining operations and the main general store in Quesnel. In 1901 he moved to Vancouver, to Melville Street, aged 60, with his family including two young sons, a niece, and the family’s Chinese domestic. For no obvious reason, the 1901 and 1902 street directories show his wife as resident, a widow, but that was corrected in 1903 and 1904, when Senator Reid died, and the entry was changed again. He had been a Liberal-conservative politician, elected to represent the Cariboo in 1881, and again in 1887. He was appointed to the Senate in 1888.

In 1908 this was the building that the Federal Deputy Minister for Labour, William Lyon McKenzie King, hired for $5 a day to hold his inquiry into the anti-Asiatic riots that heard submissions for damage claims from the property owners. It was the claims for damage to opium processing facilities that led King to introduce legislation to shut the trade down in Canada – before that he didn’t know the industry existed.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives Bu N209

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Here’s the corner of Granville and Pender Streets around 1895. That’s the new Post Office and Custom House building, and Jonathan Miller was the postmaster. C O Wickenden was the architect – he was busy around that time as he was also designing the new Christ Church in Downtown.

The building was replaced once the new larger Post Office was completed on Hastings Street in 1910, and now the corner features the 1973 Underwood, McKinley, Wilson & Smith designed Pender Place office towers. The building on the left just edging into the picture is the 1916 Bank of Montreal, these days SFU’s Segal School of Business. There’s another post that shows the same corner a few years later.

Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA SGN 920

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