Reading the Statements of Significance (SoS) written for Vancouver’s Chinatown can lead to a reasonable amount of teeth grinding and the occasional outburst of profanity given the number of errors, uninformed assumptions and lack of detailed research found in many of the texts. Unfortunately, these Statements live on the Historic Places website – the national inventory of historic buildings – which means the errors have an official stamp of approval.

Research into early structures is not easy and I’ve relied on a few faulty texts in the past. But I’ve also learned to take the information presented and go back and look at the source material. A recent example is the delightful Italianate structure just west of Columbia Street on the south side of the street at 80 East Pender. This interesting and somewhat unique example of a modest Italianate building is the only remaining building on the south side of the street to survive the development of the Great Northern Railroad’s passenger and freight terminals.

The company began purchasing property on the south side of Pender in 1904. It was a straight out real estate deal with market value being paid for the various lots. The Sam Kee Company did enter into arbitration with the railroad because they were unhappy with the initial purchase offer but by late 1904 the deals were complete. 80 East Pender (originally 46 Dupont Street) was just a couple of years old when the railroad purchased it and given its masonry construction in made sense to leave it standing.

There were no building permit records to give us an architect, but the Daily World regularly published the most recent building permits and so we do know that the builder, and probably designer, was A. E. Carter who took out a permit in 1900 for a brick and stone block. Carter had a number of key commissions to his name including the 1890 East End School designed by Thomas Hooper, the YMCA on Hastings, the City Jail, extensions to City Hall etc. The client was the Man-On Company, importers and commission agents.

The building was used by the railroad briefly a baggage store but space was later leased to the Great Northern Transfer, the Great Northern Express, Cloverdale Brick and Tile and Vancouver Coal Companies. W. H. Chow the noted Chinese Canadian architect and contractor had his offices here in the early 1900s before selling that firm to his business partner.

The design of the building points to how Chinatown’s businessmen saw the area as part of Vancouver and just like their counterparts in other parts of the city, they kept up with building trends and designs.