Tag: architectural history

Local History Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 20 – Mason Block

December 20, 2022

It’s back! I has been 3 years since I published my last Local History Advent Calendar! So much has happened since that last time—including the publication of my first book, Mount Pleasant Stories—that I figured it was about time to dust off the Local History Advent Calendar once again. Similar to a regular advent calendar but instead of chocolate treats, each day you “open” a new historical treat. Think of them as holiday cocktail party fodder– 24 facts or stories about local history that can be used as conversation starters at your next social event.

The Mason Block under construction in 1907. Photo: COV Archives, Dist P142

The Mason Block (2603 Main Street), named for owner W.H. Mason, was built from 1906 to 1907 and is an early example of mixed-use architecture. A building permit for the property was issued in 1906 for “cement stores and dwellings” at a cost of $10,000. Like the Hanna Block (Day 1, LHAC) it is constructed of reinforced concrete and cast concrete blocks, one of the first in the city. The Mason Block was built over the Brewery Creek ravine just like the Wenonah Building at 11th and Main was. In addition to the ground floor commercial space with apartments above, the building includes three 2-storey townhouses along 10th Avenue, all with private front and rear entrances – probably the city’s first set of concrete condominiums. 

Mason Block in 1992. Mount Pleasant Credit Union is located on corner. Photo: CoV Archives CVA 332-27

During the construction of the Mason Block there was a terrible accident that resulted in the death of one of the construction workers. In November 1906, carpenter Edward W. Walsh was nailing a board beneath some scaffolding holding two men when it suddenly gave way, crushing Walsh beneath it.  When he was extracted from the debris it was discovered he had broken his back, Walsh died later that day in hospital. Ed and Elizabeth Walsh, along with their children, had only recently moved to Mount Pleasant, residing at 2724 Westminster Avenue (Main Street). One of the men on the scaffolding was building owner W H. Mason. He suffered only minor injuries. 

Mason Block housing along E 10th. Photo: C. Hagemoen

You can find more Mount Pleasant stories in my walking tour book, Mount Pleasant Stories. Copies are available for purchase in Mount Pleasant at Pulpfiction Books – 2422 Main Street and in Chinatown at Massy Books – 229 E Georgia St. It makes a great gift or stocking stuffer for your favourite local history buff!

Local History Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 12 – W.H. Chow

December 12, 2022

It’s back! I has been 3 years since I published my last Local History Advent Calendar! So much has happened since that last time—including the publication of my first book, Mount Pleasant Stories—that I figured it was about time to dust off the Local History Advent Calendar once again. Similar to a regular advent calendar but instead of chocolate treats, each day you “open” a new historical treat. Think of them as holiday cocktail party fodder– 24 facts or stories about local history that can be used as conversation starters at your next social event.

1908 Henderson’s Vancouver DirectoryAdvert for W.H. Chow showing his home on 24 East 3rd Ave and the address of his office 360 Front St. (East 1st Ave).

W.H. Chow was a Chinese-Canadian architect, builder and contractor working in Vancouver from around 1907 to the late 1920s. From his office on East 1st Ave (later on Pender St, in Chinatown) he designed a variety of commercial and institutional projects for clients from Vancouver’s Chinese community.

William Henry Chow was born in 1874 in Southern China, and arrived in Canada in 1894. In 1903, he married New Westminster born Nellie Look Won, a widow and the youngest sister of Won Alexander Cumyow. In 1904 the Chows moved into a home at 160 Lorne Street (today W 3rd Ave.) in Mount Pleasant. By 1907, the family moved into a new house built by W.H. at 24 East 3rd. Avenue (pictured in the ad above).

W.H. and Nellie had 2 children together, Robert and Richard, in addition to Lena and Stanley from Nellie’s first marriage. 

W.H. Chow was involved in the short-lived B.C. Society of Architects and used the term ‘architect’ on his building drawings. However, when the Architectural Institute of BC was established in 1920, Chow was denied admission to the professional self-regulatory body because he supposedly lacked “technical skills”. It is very likely he was denied admission purely for racist reasons. In 1922 he was prosecuted for violating the Architects Act (see clippings above) for hanging a sign outside his office that advertised himself as an “architect”.

Two of the buildings that Chow designed that still stand today are the Yue Shan Society building and Ming Wo on East Pender Street. Chow also worked with architect W.T. Whiteway on several Chinatown buildings.

VDW, January 15, 1914.

You can find more Mount Pleasant stories in my walking tour book, Mount Pleasant Stories. Copies are available for purchase in Mount Pleasant at Pulpfiction Books – 2422 Main Street and in Chinatown at Massy Books – 229 E Georgia St. It makes a great gift or stocking stuffer for your favourite local history buff!

Sidewalk prisms of Vancouver

March 1, 2020

[This post has been updated since it was first published in 2016]

I was a shy child. Consequently, I spent a lot of time avoiding eye contact by looking down at the ground. All this time looking down at my feet allowed me to regard the ground upon which I was walking. Thus it was as a Vancouver kid of the 1970s that I first noticed the glassy purple squares embedded in sidewalks.

Have you ever been walking in an older part of the city and noticed a checkerboard grid of purple squares under your feet?

Sidewalk prism light mosaic. Photos: C. Hagemoen
Sidewalk prism lights mosaic. Photos: C. Hagemoen

No, they are not simply sidewalk decoration [wouldn’t that be nice?] but rather a system to illuminate spaces under sidewalks called areaways. Sidewalk prisms, also known as vault lights (or pavement lights in the UK), are glass prisms set into sidewalks in order to reflect the natural light from above, safely illuminating these subterranean spaces. [Why are they purple? The answer to that is at the end of the post].

Continue reading “Sidewalk prisms of Vancouver”

Local History Advent Calendar 2019 – Day 12 – Clayburn Bricks

December 12, 2019

Last year I took on the challenge of the first-ever Local History Advent Calendar! For 24 days in a row, I presented random historical tidbits I’d collected over the previous year and presented them in the form of “treats” for my 2018 Local History Advent Calendar. This year, the “Heart of Mount Pleasant” was number 1 on Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Watch List for 2019.  So I decided to choose Mount Pleasant as the theme for the Vanalogue Local History Advent Calendar for 2019.  Each day you can “open” a new historical treat. Think of them as holiday cocktail party fodder – 24 facts about Mount Pleasant history that can be used as conversation starters at your next social event.

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E. 10th at Quebec. Two examples of Clayburn Bricks that are seen throughout Mt. Pleasant. Photo: C.Hagemoen

Next time you are walking by one of the many historic brick buildings in Mount Pleasant, I want you to take note of the colour of the brick.  You will find that many of the  buildings are made from a yellowy-beigey-browny brick. These distinctly Mount Pleasant bricks come from the Clayburn Brick Plant near Abbotsford, B.C.. They are quite a refreshing contrast to the more familiar and traditional red brick. In the first half of the 20th Century, the Clayburn Company dominated the brick industry in BC.

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Portion of the old Clayburn Brick factory in Clayburn BC, ca. 1917. Photo: CoV Archives, PAN N67

Charles MacClure founded the Vancouver Fireclay Company Ltd. and established a brickworks in the newly created village of Clayburn, in 1905. Clayburn, located in Abbotsford, was founded as a company town.  By 1909, the firm’s name was changed to that of the town – Clayburn.  (Clayburn was also the brand name of one of the firm’s major lines of brick). The brick plant in Clayburn closed in 1931. There were several other locations for the brick manufacturing plant until 1949 when they moved to a state-of-the-art plant on Pine Street in Abbotsford. In 2011, Clayburn Industries Ltd. permanently closed its Abbotsford manufacturing plant on Pine Street, thus ending over 100 years of brick manufacturing in the Fraser Valley. Clayburn village is now a historic site.

Here are some of the Clayburn brick buildings that are located in Mount Pleasant. You will notice there are several colours of bricks ranging from brown, to buff, to yellow. So, next time you are out walking in Mount Pleasant see how many Clayburn Brick buildings you can spot.

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The Clayburn bricks of Belevdere Court -2545 Main Street. Photo: C.Hagemoen

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Portion of St. Patrick’s school at E. 11th & Quebec. Photo: C.Hagemoen

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Algonquin Apartments at 10th and Ontario. Photo: C. Hagemoen

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Canada Services Building (1964) on East 10th. Photo: C. Hagemoen

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Quebec Manor, 101 E 7th. Photo: C. Hagemoen

Master Chef and the 1978 Vancouver Heritage Advisory Committee photos

August 14, 2017

Master Chef Cafe at 2400 E. Hastings Street  – 1978. What can I say about the shirtless guy in micro jean cut-offs?! (CoV Archives , CVA 786-83.19)

Oh man, how fantastic is this photograph?!  If you ever had the privilege of dining at Master Chef you would realize how special this image is. I had no idea that the restaurant I knew as a simple “old school” diner at one time sported a cool neon sign. This space is now home to “What’s Up? Hot Dog!”, but prior to that it was home to the best turkey club sandwich and home-cut fries that I’ve ever known. Continue reading “Master Chef and the 1978 Vancouver Heritage Advisory Committee photos”

Sidewalk prisms of Vancouver

April 14, 2016

I was a shy child. Consequently, I spent a lot of time avoiding eye contact by looking down at the ground. All this time looking down at my feet allowed me to regard the ground upon which I was walking. Thus it was as a Vancouver kid of the 1970s that I first noticed the glassy purple squares embedded in sidewalks.

Have you ever been walking in an older part of the city and noticed a checkerboard grid of purple squares under your feet?

Sidewalk prism light mosaic. Photos: C. Hagemoen
Sidewalk prism lights mosaic. Photos: C. Hagemoen

No, they are not simply sidewalk decoration [wouldn’t that be nice?] but rather a system to illuminate spaces under sidewalks called areaways. Sidewalk prisms, also known as vault lights (or pavement lights in the UK), are glass prisms set into sidewalks in order to reflect the natural light from above, safely illuminating these subterranean spaces. [Why are they purple? The answer to that is at the end of the post].

Continue reading “Sidewalk prisms of Vancouver”

“Please wait a minute Mr. Postman”

June 18, 2015

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of her move to this Province, a friend of mine recently mailed out postcards from her extensive personal collection to all her friends. Each of the thoughtfully selected postcards contained a brief narrative about one of her many experiences over the past 25 years. It was a delight to receive such a personal memento in the mail.

Postcard from my friend along with a flyer (what I usually receive in the mail) arrived in my mailbox recently. Photo: C. Hagemoen
Postcard from my friend along with a flyer (what I usually receive in the mail) arrived in my mailbox recently. Photo: C. Hagemoen

Analogue experiences like this are far and few between these days thanks to the internet. There is no doubt that everyone loves to receive a handwritten card, however very few people actually take the time to write one these days. Since the advent of email, texting, twitter, Facebook and other digital technology there really isn’t a need, nor desire, to write and send letters (or cards) via snail mail. Even etiquette traditionalists, bowing to the new technology, agree that email is an acceptable way to deliver an invitation, thank-you note or business letter.

What does this all mean? It means the end of the conventional post office and mail delivery as we know it. I’m afraid that door-to-door mail delivery is going the way of the rotary dial landline telephone (remember those?) and I think that is a real shame. Continue reading ““Please wait a minute Mr. Postman””

Bottle-dash stucco

February 3, 2014

[Note: An updated version of this post was published in 2017 in Scout Magazine ]

There are several architectural features that quite distinctly define Metro Vancouver: the Vancouver Special, forests of glass condominium towers, west coast modernism, and the oddest one of them all – bottle-dash stucco. Predominately found in Vancouver, bottle-dash stucco appears throughout the Lower Mainland and occasionally in other areas of the province [edit: and the rest of Canada and the U.S. as I later found out].

Bottle-dash stucco exterior
Bottle-dash stucco exterior on house in East Vancouver. Photo: C. Hagemoen

Also known as ‘beer bottle’ stucco, ‘broken bottle’ stucco or ‘crushed bottle’ stucco, ‘bottle-dash’ stucco is something of an enigma.*** If you are not familiar with what it is, houses with bottle-dash (unlike pebble-dash) have bits of glass (most often brown beer and green pop bottles), instead of the more commonly used rock bits, embedded in the exterior stucco finish. I have been curious about bottle-dash stucco since I was a child and first saw it on my great aunt’s house in East Vancouver.  Back in the 1970s and into the 1980s, it was quite common to see it on Vancouver houses of a certain era. When I decided to research bottle-dash stucco, I found that there was very little historical information about it.

Continue reading “Bottle-dash stucco”