I’ve been researching the area around Fifth Avenue and Fir Street recently and in searching through the City of Vancouver Archives photograph collection found this photo taken in 1966. I was intrigued, it looked like a electrical sub station, but BC Hydro doesn’t do cute names, and there’s lots of lumber outside so it looks… Continue reading What’s a Hector’s?
Ghost signs are ephemeral objects that have only survived because nobody painted over them. They are a fascinating and important link to the past, but how do you preserve the layers and changes often found within one advert? Well, the Friends of Vancouver City Archives hope to answer that with their upcoming talk: Shining a… Continue reading Painting with Light…
…a cobblestone courtyard, where apparently, a hangman’s scaffold once stood. In full view of gathering public, the noose was pulled tight many times over, taking over 40 people to the grave. One of the more popular Gastown myths wrapped around Blood Alley Square is the so-called Court House and a gallows that supposedly dispatched large… Continue reading All That Hanging About…
Researching houses is always interesting. There is the architecture, or lack of it, the builders and the context that prompted a development or subdivision and there are the lives of those that once inhabited a house, sometimes ordinary, a few times interesting and occasionally linked to intriguing events. Soon after the 4th Avenue streetcar line… Continue reading From Point Grey to a Train Robbery
When working on research into Chinatown buildings, it’s common to come across newspaper reports of police raids on the area’s ‘gambling dens.’ Reporters highlighted the number of men arrested and in some cases, the haul of money confiscated. It was interesting to following up on these raids and note that cases brought forward for prosecution… Continue reading Chinatown, Gambling Raids and a Lawyer…
Research into houses is always interesting. Sometimes it’s the unexpected life or deeds of an owner or tenant that sheds a bit of light on an obscure aspect of Vancouver history. Or in the case of Marshall Smith a mystery. The house at 1685 Nelson (pictured above in the Vancouver Archives photo, to the right… Continue reading A Disappearance…
Lions have been the guardians of choice for numerous courthouses, public buildings and monuments around the world. The most famous of these, in the Commonwealth at least, might be the ones that sit at the base of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. In Vancouver, the Georgia Street side of the Vancouver Art Gallery (the former… Continue reading A Lion’s Backend…
The recent listing for sale of a nine foot wide piece of property in the Grandview neighbourhood drew lots of interest and I was interested in finding out why this odd bit of property existed. Pulling out the maps you can see District Lot 264A, which the Grandview neighbourhood sits in, being carved up into… Continue reading Odd Little Bits of Ground…
In recent research on a house on Tyne Street in Vancouver, I came across this this fascinating and terrifying account of a thunderstorm in August 1919 in the Daily World. The thunderstorm on Thursday night resulted in three houses being struck by lightning. The home of Mrs. Dunlop, Tyne street and Fifty-third avenue, was one.… Continue reading Lightning in the Neighbourhood…
Squirrels are everywhere in the city and it seems they have been with us forever. While it’s hard to believe now, squirrels were not a common sight in early 19th Century cities, in fact they were considered somewhat exotic and desirable. My curiosity was peaked when I found references to the mayor of New York… Continue reading Squirrels Were Once Desired…
What Floats to the Top of My Desk 