At the south east corner of Jackson Avenue and Hastings Street Ferrera Court is an imposing presence with its tan brick and striking terra cotta ornament. On Hastings Street to the right of the entrance is a yellow oval plaque put up in 1986 as part of Vancouver’s Centennial celebrations. These plaques detailed interesting events… Continue reading Nice Story, Wrong Location Among Other Things…
The proposed temporary fire hall at Union and Gore has echoes of an old Strathcona/Chinatown controversy when in mid-1971 two east side sites were found to be under consideration for the new home of Fire Hall No. One. The block of Union, Keefer, Dunlevy and Gore, home to about 96 residents not yet displaced by… Continue reading Ghosts of Fire Halls Past…
One of my favourite Vancouver events is the annual Salmonberry Days held in May and sponsored by the Dunbar Residents Association. I have had the pleasure of presenting a walking tour as part of the event for the past 20+ years. Each year we explore a different part of the neighbourhood accompanied by 65 or… Continue reading Dunbar Street’s Japanese Business History
So far no street views of the building have been found.
At a recent event I was discussing some research I was doing on mapping Black owned restaurants, notably the very popular Chicken Inns which could be found downtown on Seymour Street all the way through east Vancouver and out on Kingsway. In the course of our conversation Michael Gordon mentioned that he had working on… Continue reading The Porter’s Bungalow
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… Continue reading 46/80 Dupont/Pender
I recently received a photo album filled with snapshots of houses in a variety of Vancouver neighbourhoods. As I was flipping through the pages a post card fell on to my desk. It’s a blue tinted card showing the Eiffel Tower as viewed from the Trocadero. Nothing special, except on the back of the card… Continue reading A Post Card, and the Story of a Lost House
Like a Zombie 105 Keefer is back… with luck the developer will be told to go away and create a design that actualy relates to and respects the historic location it is being built on and in. The project site was referred to by the developer as a derelict parking lot with no significance or… Continue reading 105 Keefer Again
Given Vancouver’s crazy real estate market it’s not surprising that so many interesting and unique bits of architecture get consigned to the landfill. So it’s a delight to find that all five of the houses (and a garage) designed by Dutch-born architect Jan Adriaan Pauw during his short time in Vancouver have survived. Jan Adriaan… Continue reading It’s Not Just Five Houses: The Architecture of Jan Adriaan Pauw
Historic Colour Analysis and the True Colours Palette My colleague Elana Zsyblat and I are presenting a workshop on paint and historic colours for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation on April 4th at Rodde House in the West End. Apart from the fabulous 19th Century interior of the house, Elana and I will be talking colour,… Continue reading Throwing Paint Around
What Floats to the Top of My Desk 