Vanished Vancouver

This row of quaint homes on Burrard has been replaced by a commercial building. If you zoom in on the old photo, on the left you can see a couple women getting their bikes out for a ride around town while their children watch from the porch. Over the past 130 years this city's periodic bouts of frenzied growth has led thousands of homes like this—and entire neighbourhoods too—to be erased and replaced. While much of this is part of the inevitable growing pains experienced by any city, a shocking amount has been thoughtless and unnecessary.

A fascinating glimpse down Burrard Street at a much quieter time. You can see Christ Church Cathedral across the street, though in the now photo it is unfortunately covered in scaffolding. The building on the left was a five-storey ivy-covered hotel called the Glencoe Lodge. Despite all the big city dreams, as late as the 1980s much of Vancouver still had a small town feel. It was a far cry from the global metropolis people growing up in the city know today.

On the right in the distance is the Second Hotel Vancouver, a fascinating Romanesque Revival building that dominated Vancouver's skyline for decades. It was eventually made redundant by the Third (and current) Hotel Vancouver and demolished.

Looking back towards the intersection, across the street from the current Hotel Vancouver, and you will see where the Medical-Dental Building once stood. A widely celebrated Art Deco style office building, it was designed by the same architects that gave us the famous Marine Building on Burrard Street. The Medical-Dental Building was demolished in 1989 to make way for the building you see today.

This was the Birks Building, perhaps the saddest example of heritage destruction in Vancouver's history. This building, along with the Vancouver Block, the second Hotel Vancouver, and the Hudson's Bay Company store, all anchored pre-World War I Vancouver at the corner of Granville and Georgia. It was destroyed to make way for the Scotia Tower you see today.

People line up outside the Vancouver Opera House that once stood at this spot on Granville Street. It was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1891. Unlike the unimposing First Hotel Vancouver, the opera house was far more big and impressive than a city of Vancouver's size merited in those early days. Over the decades it went through a succession of owners and names before finally being demolished to make way for the Eaton's department store.

This was the first Hotel Vancouver, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway at what was then a rather empty, backwater part of the city. The CPR picked this intersection at Granville and Georgia as the new centre of the city ahead of Gastown. The plan seems to have worked. The building itself was widely mocked for being ugly and was torn down to be replaced by the second Hotel Vancouver that we've already seen.

The interesting multi-colour bricks are not visible in this black and white photo of the Fairfield Building. An Italianate-style office building, it was one of many in this part of town that have since been destroyed and replaced with rather less interesting structures.

In its time the Mackinnon Building was considered "the finest office building in the city."¹ We see it here as headquarters of the Liberal Party during an election campaign. The building that followed, the United Kingdom Building, has a bit more of a subdued modernist style.

This striking building once stood at the foot of Granville, the second railway station built by the Canadian Pacific Railway on this spot. The city outgrew the station, and in 1914 it was knocked down and replaced by the other station that stands just to the right of it today.

The Empire Building was another high-quality Italianate style office building that dated back to the city's first days.

Victory Square used to be home to Vancouver's first court house. A Palladian style building by Thomas Sorby, who also did the first Hotel Vancouver, the court house was made redundant by the new court house on Georgia and Howe (today's art gallery). It was demolished after the new court house was completed.

On the left is the rump remainder of the world-famous Woodward's department store, one of the biggest department stores in the world in its early 20th Century heyday. After World War II Woodward's fell on hard times and the surrounding neighbourhood decayed. The building had expanded to include most of the block and all but this little section was demolished to make way for a big, new development.

Alexander Pantages became famous across North America for his vaudeville theatres. This was the second in Vancouver he built and it was renamed several times. At the time this photo was taken it was named the Majestic. Just after this photo was taken the theatre was demolished to make way for a parking lot. After that this rather nondescript apartment building you see today was built.