Browse "Buildings & Monuments"

After the war, Vancouver's modernists, Lawren HARRIS among them, set the gallery on a new course.

When BC Electric chairman Dal Grauer decided to move to new headquarters south of Georgia Street, he wanted a building that would symbolize optimism and progress. What he got was a gleaming 21-storey modernist structure that glowed with electric light 24 hours a day.

The sparkling white terra cotta tiles of the Birks building lit the southeast corner of Granville and Georgia from 1913. Inside, sparkling jewelry, silver and fine china attracted the most demanding, and wealthy, clientele. It was a shock to the city when the Birks family decided to tear the impressive grand dame down in 1975.

“Meet me at the Birks clock” was the standard Vancouver rendezvous plan in the pre-cell phone era of 1913 to 1974. But the Birks clock itself has been a wandering timepiece. It started at Granville & Hastings, moved to Granville & Georgia, and returned to its original intersection — but across the street!

While Expo 86 was revolutionizing Vancouver’s image to a world-class centre for tourism and upscale development, a very different revolution was happening in its counter-culture. In the 1980s, Vancouver was an international centre for punk music, with the Smiling Buddha Cabaret at its pulsing heart.

To find sophisticated entertainment in old Vancouver you had to go underground, into a grotto where stalactites hung from the ceiling and pirate’s gold shimmered in darkly lit corners. The Cave Supper Club hosted the world’s most famous entertainers and beautiful showgirls for 44 years. It was the rare place in subdued Vancouver to go out on a weekend evening for some risqué entertainment and exotic drinks.

Sears is there now, but in January 1946, the elegant old Hotel Vancouver sat at this site, vacant and waiting for the wrecking ball. A few enterprising veterans, victims of the postwar housing shortage, saw an opportunity.

The fairy-tale bridge whose image more than any other symbolizes Vancouver was actually built by a beer company to develop its land investment in West Vancouver.

The Vancouver Special took form largely between 1965 and 1985 due to new possibilities in the mass production of cheap and accessible housing. It is the primary form of architecture unique to Vancouver.

The WEM remains the largest shopping centre in North America. It was among the first shopping centres to offer a wide range of amenities, from water parks to themed streets - attractive at any time of year but particularly during winter.