207 Union & Jimi Hendrix - Some Clarification

There have been a number of articles in the Vancouver media and online recently about the discovery of a Jimi Hendrix connection to a small red brick building on Union Street, just east of Main at 207 Union. The little building has been turned into a shrine of sorts to Jimi's memory.


There is, of course, a Hendrix family connection to Vancouver's East End. Jimi's grandparents Ross and Zenora Hendrix came here from the US in 1911 and lived in a number of places, including Davie Street in the West End, Triumph Street in the East End, etc. The best known of these Hendrix houses at 827 East Georgia has been beautifully renovated and just recently has had a heritage plaque installed in its front garden. 


But before anyone goes to arrange for a permanent plaque in front of the little brick house at 207 Union I need to interject what I know about this building.


How I came across what I know is from the time I was researching the now demolished little blue house that stood about 100 feet to the east of the red brick building at 227 Union. (See earlier posts below).


I studied about 20 addresses both on the north and south side of the of the 200 block of Union, originally Barnard Street. On the north side, I researched 207 to 227 Union and on the south I researched 208 to 230 Union.


207 Union, the address in question, first appears in the directories in 1902 as the home of bricklayer William H. Hooper, but then in 1903 it appears as a boarding house run by Ontario-born Christopher Foley and his wife Bridget. 


From 1905 to 1911, the address is listed as a rooming house run by Abraham and Elizabeth Turner. Then from 1912 to about 1919 it was again listed as a rooming house run by English-born warehouseman John C. Parkyn and his family.


Wow! A boarding house or rooming house in that little building? What cramped quarters it must have been.


From 1920 to 1939 the address appears as the Westminster Rooms. By now I hope you have gotten it. Just because a house or building in 2009 appears as 207 Union, it doesn't mean that 207 Union is the actual historical address of the building.

Historically, 207 Union has been the address for a house which once stood on the site of the youth hostel building on the corner of Main and Union and then for a Union Street facing entrance of the hostel building. If you look at the wall facing Union Street near the south east corner of the building you will see the faint trace of that entrance which is now bricked up.


So what was the little red brick building that has been now converted into a Jimi Hendrix shrine? And what connection, if any, did it have with Jimi Hendrix?


The little red brick building first makes it appearance in the city directories in 1936 as 207½ Union. That year it is listed as vacant, but from 1936 to 1941 it is listed as the offices for Columbia Taxi. From 1942 to 1946 it is again listed as vacant, but in 1947, it appears as Jee's Grocery & Confectionery. It disappears from the records until 1971 when it reappears as the vacant 207a Union. In 1972 it appears as an Antique Auto Parts & Accessories shop. From 1973 to 1975, 207a Union is the W. Lim Company, a Chinese grocery. From 1976 to 1980, it was vacant. Then in 1981 it was listed as the home of K. S. Fong. In 1982 it was again vacant. That is the last time the little red brick building was listed in the directories. 207 Union as a Union Street-facing entrance of what is now the hostel building disappears from the directories in 1998. I am not able to determine when the little brick building inherited 207 as an address, but it must have been after 2001 when the last Criss-Cross city directory was published.


So what is the Jimi Hendrix connection? Well, if there is any connection at all it is because the address next door, 209 Union--now the parking lot between the brick building and the alley--was from about 1948 to 1979 the location of the legendary Vie's Chicken and Steak House. Vie's was a famous Hogan's Alley landmark known all across the city. It was a favourite destination for visiting Black performers, including Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole. If Jimi's grandmother worked in a restaurant anywhere on Union it was likely here and Jimi would no doubt have visited her there, perhaps even played there, but that history is not written down anywhere I have seen so far.

So does the little brick house have any connection to Jimi Hendrix? Who can really say? There is that period from 1948 to 1970 when the building is not listed in the directories. It might have been used as storage by Robert and Viva Moore during that period, so who went there or played there is something we will never really know. The little building did stand exactly beside 209 Union. From what we can tell from the only picture we have of 209 Union, the little brick building did indeed touch 209 Union. It was only a handshake away from the real thing. And if that type of association is good enough for the shrines dedicated to prophets, patriarchs and saints in the Holy Land, shouldn't it be good enough for us?


Thanks to Wayde Compton of the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project for the use of the photo of 207 Union.

For a great article on Vie's Chicken and Steak House check out Keith McKellar's fascinating book, Neon Eulogy. See page 83.

Also, for more on the history of the Black Community in Hogan's Alley and the East End read Carole Itter and Daphne Marlatt's book, Opening Doors. There is a great interview with Nora Hendrix, Jimi's grandmother from age 53.

History Walking Tours in Vancouver's Old East End

Some months back I was approached by Heritage Vancouver Society, to do a history walking tour of my neighbourhood, Vancouver's old East End, now known as Strathcona. Though I have researched hundreds of houses in the neighbourhood and have a background in tourism, at first I resisted. There were already a number of people and organizations offering tours in the neighbourhood: John Atkin, author of a number of great books, including Strathcona: Vancouver's First Neighbourhood, the UBC Department of Urban Geography, the Architectural Insitute of BC, the BC Jewish Museum and Archives, and even the Vancouver Police Museum. Ultimately, I realized that all of these people and groups have a different focus, and each of them show and talk about different aspects of this fascinating neighbourhood.

My route, first offered on August 15th to an oversold crowd of 44 people is the culmination of years of researching over 250 homes in the East End. Although architecture is a minor theme in the tour, my focus is more on the social history—the ebb and flow of different waves of immigrants who established themselves here before moving on to other parts of the city. Most people know about Little Italy, Hogan’s Alley, the East End’s early Jewish Community, and Japantown, but did you know that there were whole blocks of Newfoundlanders and a sizable Syrian colony here as well in the early 1900s?

The tour touches on the impact and influences of portside industries (BC Sugar, shipyards, etc.) prohibition, (the proliferation of bootlegging), the Oriental Exclusion Act (bachelor rooming houses, etc.), the Japanese Canadian internment, as well as the City Planning Department’s attempts to wipe out “urban blight”. It also gives participants the chance to see the locations of the previous homes of well-known East End residents, like pioneer female aviator Tosca Trasolini, premier Dave Barrett, champion boxers Jimmy McLarnin and Felice Di Palma (Di Palma boxed under the name Phil Palmer), Rabbi Nathan Meyer Pastinsky, award-winning authors Paul Yee and Wayson Choy, Ross and Nora Hendrix (Jimi’s grandparents), community activists Mary Lee Chan and Shirley Chan, and BC Supreme Court Judge, community leader Angelo Branca, and k.d. lang.

Even with 250 houses under my belt there is still so much I don't know and want to know about my neighbourhood. In an attempt to better prepare for a second set of tours offered on September 5th to two smaller groups I looked up some houses on a street I was researching in the census records and stumbled on a second house with a Hendrix family connection. Ross and Nora Hendrix don't actually appear in the directory listings for the year the census was taken so no one knew about this Hendrix house before. I introduced the house as a special surprise treat at the end of my tour.

I happen to know the owners of the house, and when I e-mailed them to let them know the exciting news, they were of course delighted, but more importantly, they told me another important pice of history associated with the house. The same house that the Hendrix family lived in earlier in the century was home to Charles Yip Quong and Nellie Towers, the first mixed Chinese/Caucasian married couple in Vancouver. Apparently Nellie was a well-known and much loved midwife in the neighbourhood. Here is a link to a Parks Canada page on Nellie Yip Quong.
http://www.pc.gc.ca/culture/ppa-ahp/itm3-/page02_e.asp

So there you have it. Piece by piece, this neighbourhood's lost history gets revealed and shared by happenstance and amazing coincidences. And I am sure that there is so much more to discover.

For information about my upcoming History Walks in Vancouver click this link.

Private tours are also available in English, Japanese and Italian for groups of 5 people or more, or a minimum cost of $100 per tour for groups of smaller size. For more information on my History Walks or to book a tour, e-mail me at historywalks@gmail.com.

Cost $20

Thanks to Lucille Mars, Gary McDonald, Emidio De Julius, and Norah McLaren respectively for the first, second, third and fifth photos above. The fourth photo is City of Vancouver Archives Photo Port N3.1 showing two portraits of Hogan's Alley resident Field William Spotts.