HELP US HELP SAVE VANCOUVER'S HISTORY!

Mil P220.3

Every day we see archival images of our city in newspapers, on websites, in books, in documentaries and even hanging framed on office and restaurant walls. Where do these precious photos and films come from, how did they survive and how are people and organizations so easily able to access them?

The City of Vancouver Archives is one of the most popular “go to” places for archival photographs and film, as well as many other historical records. For seventeen years the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives (FVCA) has raised funds to help collect, save and preserve these rare and vital objects of our cities past.

Money raised by the Friends helped purchase: a 1600 cubic foot cold storage facility to preserve the Archives’ deteriorating photographs and films, web publisher software to assist researchers search the database, a dye-sublimation printer and the Archives’ Reading Room photocopier. Currently the funds the Friends raised are supporting a crucial description and digitization of a backlog of old photos donated to the Archives Collection.

“I found my grandfather`s 8mm film of a 1944 Callister Exhibition Park Rodeo held on the old PNE grounds. You can even see the wooden roller coaster in the background. The film was beginning to show signs of deterioration and would have soon turned into a sticky messy roll. It`s now safely preserved in the Archive’s cold storage room and digitized to view on their website...” says Friends board member Jolene Cumming.

As with many groups, the Friends have been hit hard by budget and granting cuts. You can help support our work to support the endeavours of The Archives by attending our Fall Fundraiser. Other ways to help preserve records of Vancouver’s past include; purchasing memberships, cash donations or donating your family or firm’s archival records.

2010 FUNDRAISING EVENT

The Friends of the Vancouver City Archives are asking the Vancouver citizens, organizations, businesses and others to help them “Help Save Vancouver” by attending:

“Researching Women in the Archives & in the Family”

An illustrated talk by M. Diane Rogers

President of the BC Genealogical Society

Explore researching strategies, techniques and learn how to interpret archival photographs.

Sunday Nov 14^th, 2010

2pm-4pm

Includes a Reception with Refreshments by Emelle’s Catering.

Tickets $25. 

Please Register by November 9^th  at 604-736-8561

Event location: City Archives at 1150 Chestnut Street in Vanier Park

More info: www.vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/archives/friends/index.htm

Media contact:

James Johnstone, Chair, Friends of the Vancouver City Archives

househistorian@yahoo.ca

CVA 677-35 Malkin Family at 1406 Davie

THE FRIENDS OF THE VANCOUVER CITY ARCHIVES SOCIETY PRESENTS:

Bute and Nelson in 1890, CVA Photo Dist P 59 by Bailey Brothers

The Old West End Revisited:

An Interactive Street by Street Photographic Journey

Date: July 19^th

Time: 7pm

Location: City of Vancouver Archives, 1150 Chestnut Street

Enjoy a sentimental trip back to the time when the West End had no highrises and its streets were still lined with intact blocks of stately Victorian and Edwardian homes.

1900 and 2000-blocks of Nelson in 1908

Come time travel with Vancouver house historian, history walk guide and Chair of the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives, James Johnstone as he guides you on a street by street tour of the old West End using the City of Vancouver Archives’ fascinating collection of archival images.

Do you like old photographs of Vancouver? Did you grow up in the West End or have memories of the neighbourhood you would like to share? Or are you curious about what once stood on the site of your highrise apartment or condo? Can you help us identify some houses or people in some of our mystery photos? Then this would be a perfect night for you.

This is a FREE event for members of the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives.

• Seating is limited.
• Non-members are certainly welcome.
• Suggested donation for non-members is $10.
• or, you can buy a $20 membership to the Friends of the Vancouver city Archives and become immediately eligible for a 50% discount on all 8x10 B&W archival prints.
• For more information call 604-736-8561

1461 West Georgia in November of 1958. A. L. Yates photo

Check out this Panorama View of Vancouver!

This is a view of Vancouver taken by W. J. Moore from atop the Lee Block (NW corner of Bradway and Main) on 7 July 1913. This is City of Vancouver Archives Photo PAN N161A. Remember you can click on this photo to enlarge it. You can see this photo at a greater magnification on the City of Vancouver Archives Website. 

Are you interested in old photos of Vancouver? You will find literally thousands online on the City of Vancouver Website. Join the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives Society and you can get a 50% discount on 8x10 prints! Interested? Here's how you can join: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/archives/friends/index.htm

THE WEST END – It Wasn't Always Highrise Apartments

My interest in old houses really became intense once I moved to the West End from Richmond in 1982. My first apartment was in a building called The Viking at 1111 Barclay, across from Ewing Buchan’s house at 1114 Barclay, today known as the “O Canada House”. Back then, there were still quite a few old houses in the neighbourhood, even along Robson Street. I remember shopping for French language books and comic books in a shop in a beautiful old Edwardian Box on the south side of Robson near Bute or so. So much is changed. Later, I lived at 1220 Cardero, right across from Hy’s Mansion which was in Gabriola, Sugar King B. T. Rogers’ old mansion.

I worked downtown in the Bentall Centre and every morning would take a different route to work admiring the old mansions and houses along Nelson and Barclay Streets. Of course I loved Roedde House. There used to be a beautiful old Queen Anne just south of Mac’s Milk at Davie and Bute, and you can still see some beautiful old Victorians above the shops on some blocks of Denman Street. There was one magnificent rambling old house I remember on Nelson. It had a beautiful stone foundation and a rap around porch and a great turret. While I lived in the West End it was torn down and replaced with an uninspiring apartment building. 

It was seeing that building go down that spurred my interest in heritage preservation and it was seeing what went up on the site of that magnificent old building that made me feel that certain architects should be pilloried beside their work to discourage such abomination. (Okay, I know it is not really the architect’s fault but...)

In the early 90s I lived in an apartment building on Burnaby Street called The Princess. I found out that the penthouse on the small three story walk up at 1310 Burnaby I used to look down on just west of us was where Errol Flynn died on October 14, 1959. Across the street and to the West of Jervis is a high rise called Hendry House. It stands on the site of a former West End mansion build for lumber baron John Hendry (see above), who prior to moving to Vancouver lived in an even more magnificent mansion in New Westminster. (Photo of Hendry Mansion in New Westminster below)

In 1995, I left the West End and moved into a wonderful old Edwardian Box on Odlum Drive in Grandview Woodland with my ex at the time. It was this house that spurred my forays into house history research. In those early days at the City of Vancouver Archives, when I was still learning the very basics about how to research my house, I would take breaks from the old City Directories and pore over the old black and white photographs in the black and red binders there. One day I found a number of pictures of the house that once stood on the site of The Princess Apartments on Burnaby Street. Years ago, at the turn of the last century when Burnaby Street was lined with the mansions of the rich, 1340 Burnaby was the address of the mansion of CPR treasurer William Ferriman Salsbury. Just prior to World War I when the West End’s blue bloods moved to Shaughnessy Heights, a second mansion was built for Salsbury at 1790 Angus, but prior to that, Salsbury and his family lived on Burnaby Street in a magnificent wooden shingled fantasy house with an Ionian columned portico, turrets and a beautiful hipped roof.

The City of Vancouver Archives and the Vancouver Public Library’s Special Collections are full of similar amazing photos of what the West End once looked like. My fantasy is that every owner or manager of a West End highrise apartment would come down to the Archives for visit VPL Special Collections and order a large format photo of the house that once stood on their property so that it could be properly framed and displayed in the apartment’s lobby. It would add another layer of magic to the West End. If I had any say…

 

All photos except the second, third, and fourth are from the City of Vancouver Archives.
 BU P319 - 1114 Barclay
 BU P467, 468 and 469 - 1340 Burnaby
The second Photo is VPL #26847 and shows a house on Jervis (near Barclay?)
The third image if VPL Photo 1881 showing the Hendry Mansion on the NE corner of Burnaby and Jervis.
The fourth photo is a digital image from a book in VPL Special Collections of John Hendry's Mansion in New Westminster.