How the Chinese saved Strathcona

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Eve Lazarus

Last week I mentioned how– Crosscut, a Seattle blog, had called our $1.2 billion South Fraser Perimeter Road section “the highway to hell” and placed it on a list of the worst offences against heritage in North America.

The whole project pales in comparison to a 1960s plan for a freeway system that would have wiped out Strathcona, most of Chinatown, much of the West End, plopped an ocean parkway along English Bay, and turned Vancouver into a mini Los Angeles, in what Gordon Price recently called “the most important thing that never happened.”

The plan was to construct a freeway between Union and Prior Streets, while another proposal called for a giant trench that would run through downtown from the Burrard Bridge to a third crossing of Burrard Inlet from Stanley Park.

Fortunately for us, the only part of the plan that eventuated is the contentious Georgia Viaduct that nobody seems to know what to do with.

The freeway system included an Ocean Parkway along English Bay

The 1960's freeway proposal for Vancouver

Continue reading →

Posted in Vancouver history | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Heritage Turkeys

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Eve Lazarus

This is one list you don’t want your name on.

Crosscut, a blog out of Seattle, released it’s Heritage Turkeys of the Year list, what it calls “who did most to raze, wreck, uproot, neglect and generally trash our historic treasures in 2011”

Metro Vancouver made the cut twice.

The Pantages for demolition of historic theatre and “Vancouver’s Highway to hell” for “historic cannery demolition, threat to archaeological and burial grounds.’

Looking west towards Glenrose Cannery

The South Fraser Perimeter Road

Our “Highway to hell”—Crosscut aptly calls it a “car wreck”—is the $1.2 billion South Fraser Perimeter Road section, a four-lane highway that hugs the Fraser River’s shoreline from Delta to Surrey and cuts through BC’s oldest archeological site, aboriginal burial grounds and has already taken out the 1896 Glenrose fishing cannery, as well as a shitload of trees.

Heritage Vancouver called the destruction of the Pantages Theatre one of “demolition by neglect and by indecision” and a huge needless loss to the heritage of our city. Located at Hastings and Main, the 1908 theatre was left to rot for years, and finally torn down in December, its 750,000 unique orange bricks sold to a developer in Annacis Island and broken bits going to roadfill. Owned by Alexander Pantages, the Vancouver theatre was the second oldest in a chain of about 30 vaudeville theatres across North America. Alexander (actually his name was Pericles, but he called himself after Alexander the Great) settled in Seattle in 1902, but a huge clan of his relatives lived in Vancouver. Alexander’s nephew Peter, made his own stamp in town, founding the Peter Pan Café on Granville Street and the annual Polar Bear Swim. 

The Peter Pan Cafe

Peter Pantage's cafe -- May 1934

If you’d like to see our heritage while it’s still standing, you can sign up for Heritage Vancouver’s annual bus tour of the Top 10 Endangered Sites for 2012 on May 5. Tickets are $30 or $25 for members.

Posted in Endangered sites | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Seriously–you think your house price won’t tank?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Eve Lazarus

Want a conversation stopper at your next party? Just bring up the impending real estate meltdown in Vancouver –the one where house prices implode.

You’ll be mocked and told how interest rates are at historically low levels and you’ll hear all about those swarms of filthy rich Chinese flooding our borders. Then, they’ll tell you that thanks to the feds and the CMHC, pretty much anyone can over-extend themselves with 5% down and 35 years to pay it back.

"renovate and build your dream home here"

For sale: $1,788,000 - 4343 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver

I went onto ClickRealty’s website and searched for single family homes in Vancouver between $1.5 and $2 million. Can’t do it—there are too many. So, instead I just clicked on houses at random.

In the example here of the $1.78 million house on West 12th, say you have a 20% down payment of $357,600, an interest rate of 5% and a 25 year amortization and you lock all that in for the next five years; your monthly mortgage payment is $8,319.28. That’s $99,831.36 a year not including taxes, lawyer’s fees, and renovation costs.

Now take another look at the house in this picture.

Interest rates have hovered below 5% for the past seven years, but historical averages are more like 10%. Let’s say when you come to remortgage in 2017, rates have jumped to a modest 7%. Your new monthly payments are $10,018.75 a month—an increase of $20,393.64 a year and your mortgage will now cost $120,225 a year.

I probably don’t need to point out that the median wage in BC is $66,700.

1947 house in point grey

For sale: $1,388,888 - 4591 16th Avenue, Vancouver (1947)

In a report released last June, Sal Guatieri, senior economist, Bank of Montreal, conservatively notes that Vancouver houses cost 11.2 times median family incomes. “Riding a wave of wealthy immigrants, Vancouver’s house prices have nearly tripled in the past decade,” he says. “After running only modestly above Toronto’s prices in the early 2000s, Vancouver is now 71 per cent higher.”

Last November, the audience at a Vancouver Board of Trade discussion on housing were told that high immigration to Metro Vancouver and continued low interest rates will keep the regional housing market strong into 2012. The panel included the president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, CEO of Ledingham McAllister Properties and moderator David Podmore, CEO of Concert Properties—not exactly an unbiased lot.

 

For sale: $1,588,000 - 3470 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver

While things may stay peachy for 2012, Richard Wozny of Site Economics, a research and consulting firm, warned that Asian buyers may not continue as a market force. “China is

seeing a property bubble,” he said. “Sixty million homes remain vacant in China and hundreds of millions of square feet of office and industrial are vacant, all just speculative.”

Still think your house is safe? Let’s go back 100 years.

I took these nuggets of information away from a Vancouver Museum  exhibit a few years back:

Real estate purchases exceed all the heady expectations of eager investors in the boom years between 1908 and 1912. It all collapses in 1913 and the price of land does not recover to its pre-bust levels until the mid 1950s.

That’s over 40 years!

33' x 120' lot in Kitsilano

For sale: $1,550.000 - 3018 7th Avenue, Vancouver

Posted in Vancouver history | Tagged | Leave a comment

Peter Pantages and the Polar Bear Swim

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Eve Lazarus
Polar Bear Swim kicked off in 1920

January 1, 1939 Polar Bear Swim

Being an Aussie, I really don’t get the appeal of plunging into frigid salty water, but I do love the history behind the Polar Bear Swim.

Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the New Year’s Day swim, which Peter Pantages kicked off on January 1, 1920, about a year after he’d arrived in Vancouver from Greece.

Peter started work as an usher at his cousin Alexander’s Pantages Theatre on Hastings Street. By 1929 he was running the Peter Pan Café on Granville with his three brothers Lloyd, Angelo and Alphonsos.

Photographer: Stuart Thomson

Peter Pantages December 15, 1927

Known to swim in English Bay three times a day, every day, Peter wanted everyone to know that it was possible to swim every day of the year in Vancouver. The story goes that he invited a handful of mates over for a New Year’s drink and talked them into taking the plunge into the waters of English Bay. That event kicked off the Polar Bear Club. Under the constitution of the club, anyone who wanted to be president had to go swimming every day—no freezing rain, snow or sickness excused.

The Swim attracted 2,246 participants last year–its biggest yet.

Peter died in Hawaii in 1971; he’d been swimming, of course.

Home of Peter and Helen Pantages

The Pantages lived here from 1925 to the 1970s

The house where he and wife Helen brought up four children is still there at 343 East 13th Avenue, Vancouver.

 

 

Posted in Home Histories | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Wah Wong and the Parrot

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Eve Lazarus
Louis the Parrot managed to stave off developers for 17 years

Louis the Parrot

I was doing some research on Victoria and came across this story about Louis the celebrity parrot–a blue and yellow macaw who single handedly held up development in the downtown core. Louis, who was profiled in Life Magazine and has a heritage award named after him, lived to the ripe old age of 115 on a diet of hard-boiled eggs, walnuts and brandy fed to him by a Chinese manservant, while he ruled the roost in a white mansion near the Empress Hotel.

As far as I can make out, Louis hatched in the early 1860s in South America. Seems he kicked around there for awhile before ending up in the possession of five-year-old Victoria Jane Wilson.

Jane’s mother Mary, the daughter of Alexander Munro, came from well-heeled fur trading stock, while her father, James Keith Wilson, manager of the Bank of BC, dabbled in real estate. Wilson bought a chunk of prime real estate at 730 Burdett Street, built the three-storey mansion, and because he was over protective of Jane to the point of paranoia, surrounded it with high walls.

Home of Victoria Jane Wilson and Louis the Parrot

The Wilson Mansion, Burdett Avenue, Victoria

As Jane grew older and more eccentric, she added 60-odd exotic birds to her collection, keeping them in an aviary that took up the top floor of the house. In 1911, Jane painfully shy, but pleasantly rich, decided that fresh air would benefit Louis, her favourite. She bought a Hupp Yeats electric car and took driving lessons. Unfortunately Louis disliked the noise of the outdoors and the smelly fumes, so the car stayed in the garage.

Jane’s mother died in 1917, her father in 1934 and Jane lived on in the house until her own death in 1949. When the lawyers read the will they found that she was worth around $500,000, with an estate that included over 100 pairs of white gloves, the aviary and a car that had clocked up less than 50 miles and was found sealed inside the garage. While most of her money went to charity, she left Louie with a $200 a week stipend and appointed Wah Wong the Chinese gardener as trustee and parrot keeper.

According to the terms of the Will, the property could be sold, but not developed while the birds remained alive. In other words, the birds stayed on as tenants.

Built in 1966

Chateau Victoria Hotel

Louis and Wah Wong watched while the mansion changed hands several times, was divided up into apartments and left slowly to rot into a downtown eyesore. They managed to stave off its destruction for 17 years, but eventually got the boot when the developers won and bulldozed the mansion to make room for the 19-storey Chateau Victoria Hotel.

Wah Wong refused to give interviews, but according to newspaper reports, Louis lived with him until he died in 1967. Then, like his owner, Louis turned reclusive and lived out the rest of his life in obscurity until his own death in 1985. Presumably, the Wong family continued to earn $200 a week for the parrot’s rent and board.

Louis went to live with Wah Wong after developers kicked him out of his mansion

Is this the house where Louis lived out his last days?

Posted in Home Histories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Penthouse Night Club

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Eve Lazarus

I’m one of the few people in this city that’s never been to the Penthouse Night Club, and fortunately for me I’ll still get the chance because of the quick response by Vancouver firefighters early this morning.

Yes, it’s a strip club with dubious connections, but it’s also one of the longest running family businesses in the city and its history of bootlegging and bad cops is also the history of early Vancouver.

Over the years current owner Danny Filippone has knocked back offers to bulldoze the place for another downtown office building or high-rise, but kept it going because he loves the building’s story. “We can paint it and refurbish it and hold all sorts of special events, but the Penthouse will always have its past and that’s what makes it different,” he told a reporter in 2009.

The story of its connections to the underworld and high class prostitution has been told many times as has the murder of owner and son of the founder, Joe Philliponi.

A few years ago I interviewed Bernie “Whistling” Smith and this is his story.

Bernie was 14 when he went to work for Philliponi in 1937 (his name was actually Filippone, but Canadian customs couldn’t spell it. At that time Philliponi owned and operated Eagle-Time Delivery Systems, a bike courier system. Philliponi called Smith “Speed Ball 21.” When Philliponi asked him what he wanted to do with his life, Smith told him he wanted to be a policeman. Philliponi, he said, actively encouraged him.

Smith joined the Vancouver Police Department in 1947, the same year that Philliponi opened the Penthouse Cabaret. The Penthouse originally opened as a bottle club providing ice and mix to customers at wildly inflated prices and turning a blind eye to their booze, usually hidden under the table in brown paper bags. Soon it attracted headliners such as Sammy Davis Junior, Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte and George Burns. Supposedly Errol Flynn dropped in the day before he died.

Ironically, Smith, who earned his nickname for whistling while he patrolled the streets, became a detective in the liquor squad and spent many nights in and out of clubs. “It was part of a way of life, and as a policeman, I didn’t feel like crawling on my hands and knees under a table looking for a bottle of whisky, so we would try and get them before they went in,” he said. “You must understand bootlegging was a violation of the Provincial Government Liquor Act, it wasn’t a criminal offence. The government could have stopped it by opening a liquor store any time at all. They were making money both ways: the money from the bootleggers when they bought from the government, and the fines that they got when they caught them. They sold them the stuff then fined them for selling it.”

Police, he said, would take the confiscated liquor to the station and return it later for a $15 “service charge.”

In 1983, at 71, Philliponi was shot to death in his office in a failed robbery attempt. Smith, along with a crowd of several hundred, including judges, businessmen and dancers, attended his funeral at Christ Church Cathedral on Burrard Street.

I figure if the Penthouse can survive police raids, its closure in 1975 when the vice squad charged Philliponi with living off the avails of prostitution, and legions of developers, it can withstand some smoke and water damage. Also think it’s about time I checked it out.

Posted in Modern heritage | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Villa Russe

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Eve Lazarus

Looking for a mansion on the right side of town?  3390 The Crescent is on the market for $31.9 million. I’m guessing the owners are receptive to a lower bid, since as John Mackie points out, it was up for sale last year for only $17.9 million.

3390 The Crescent

Wondering what one gets for $30 odd million in Vancouver? According to the real estate blurb that would be 10,000+ square feet of house nestled on an acre of land with the obligatory grand entry and sweeping staircase, as well as massive living room, five fireplaces, a master bedroom with not one, but three dressing rooms and quarters for the staff, who you’ll need to cook, clean, mow and provide maps to find your way to the games room, gym and cellar.

What it doesn’t say is that the stately mansion has a great story.

It was built in 1922 for Misak Yremavitch Aviazoff, a local money man and arts lover, and his wife Aileen. The Aivazoff’s loved to entertain and counted Grand Duke Alexander, Serge Rachmanioff, Prince Obelinsky among their guests.

Aviazoff, who is listed in the city directories as president of New Method Coal and Supplies, did not do well in the Depression. He and Aileen bumped around to different Shaughnessy addresses, likely short-term rentals, and by 1938 Aileen is a landlady at a West End apartment building.

H.A. Wallace, the ship builder bought the house from the Aivazoffs and lived there until 1946, when it changed hands again and BC Electric became the owner and Albert Edward (Dal) Grauer, head of the company and his family moved in.

3390 The Crescent

The Grauer Children in front of Villa Russe, 1958

Sherry Grauer was eight when she and three siblings moved into the house, which she describes as “Mediterranean”. Sherry, now an artist living on Vancouver Island, says the house only had three bedrooms (it now has six), so her father built an addition on the back and a pool with a cabana designed by family friend Arthur Erickson.

Sherry’s mother painted portraits and flowers and she remembers going upstairs to bed while her father played Chopin or Schubert on the piano.

By 1961, Dal Grauer, dying with leukemia, continued to battle the BC Government over its decision to take over the company (now BC Hydro). The government announced the takeover the day of Grauer’s funeral. Still, he managed to kick back from the grave. Sherry says her father incorporated his $2 million plus estate into a family company in another province and legally stiffed the government for estate taxes. “And that made Wacky Bennett very cross,” she said. Dal also left his stamp on the BC Electric Building (now the Elektra), built in 1957, and the Dal Grauer Substation.

John Mackie’s article: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+mansion+sale+million/5735598/story.html

See realtor’s listing at http://www.ecorealtyinc.ca/listing?id=259090654

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Home Histories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fred Thornton Hollingsworth

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Eve Lazarus

Lee Atwell grew up in a Hollingsworth house.

Her parents bought the “Watt’s Residence” from the original owners in 1965. It was built for $15,000 in 1951.

Designed by Fred Thornton Hollingsworth

3635 Sunnycrest Drive, North Vancouver

Lee’s dad died this year, and she and her sister Bev, who both live out of province, put the house on the market – only the third time in the sixty years since it was built.

“It was my Dad’s wish to live in the house until the time he passed at the age of 87—he loved the house so much,” Lee said. “I feel not only was it my parents who influenced our aesthetic tastes and deep connection to the natural world, but also the house itself. The house helped to define who we are today.”

Lee and Bev’s fear was that new owners would want to raze the place and put up something new. So they were immensely relieved when they found buyers who also love the house. Instead of tearing it down, they’ve hired Fred’s son Russell Hollingsworth, to design an addition in keeping with his father’s philosophy.

I’ve written about Hollingsworth before, but Lee’s comments made me want to revisit some of his architecture, because when it comes to post-war architecture, Fred Hollingsworth is a rock star. He invented the Neoteric style where Lee, Bev and their older brother grew up—affordable family housing with a small footprint, open plan and simple post and beam construction. As early as 1946, Hollingsworth was including radiant floor heating, clerestory windows and skylights to let in lots of light and old growth wood paneling.

As Lee will tell you, a Hollingsworth house is part design, part art and part architecture. Continue reading →

Posted in Modern heritage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Sensational Murder of Esther Castellani

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Eve Lazarus

Set in middle-class Kerrisdale, the green duplex at 2092 West 42nd Avenue is such an ordinary place it’s hard to imagine it was the stage for one of the most sensational murders in Vancouver’s history.

Esther Castellani, 40, died in 1965 from slow and painful arsenic poisoning by her husband of 19 years. A saleswoman at a children’s clothing store, Esther had a 12-year-old daughter Jeannine.

Rene Castellani ran CKNW’s promotional department and was known for his outrageous stunts. Once he played a Maharaja who wanted to buy British Columbia—going so far as to take out ads on bus boards. He stayed at the Western Bayshore, dressed as an Indian prince and rode around in limousines with bodyguards and an entourage of dancing girls. So effective was the campaign that outraged locals made up signs shouting “Keep BC British.” Shortly before his wife’s death, Rene climbed into a car perched on top of the 20-metre Bow Mac sign on West Broadway and vowed to stay there until every last car on the lot sold. It took eight days.

Three weeks after her death, an autopsy found that Esther’s arsenic levels were 1,500 times the normal arsenic content of the body. Rene wasn’t arrested until months later when police discovered his affair with the radio station’s blonde receptionist and stumbled over a box of arsenic laden Triox weed killer under his kitchen sink. Rene had been adding the weed killer to Esther’s food and the milkshakes he thoughtfully brought her home from White Spot.

Esther knew about the affair. She’d received anonymous late night phone calls from a woman who asked: “Do you know your husband is going around with someone else?” She found a love letter in Rene’s pocket from Lolly whose real name was Adelaide Ann Miller. Lolly, a young single mother with a six-year-old daughter, was recently widowed when her husband drowned while the couple was out boating.

Shortly after Esther confronted Rene about his affair she started to get stomach and lower back pain severe enough to keep her off work. Over the next couple of months she had bouts of nausea and diarrhea which quickly turned into intense pain and vomiting. Her fingers and toes went numb and she couldn’t walk or use her hands. Various diagnoses had the cause as sodium retention or gallbladder problems brought on by poor diet. Doctors failed to clue into the arsenic poisoning even after several visits and a two-month long hospital stay.

The autopsy revealed that Esther had ingested arsenic for more than six months before her death, including the time she was in hospital. The lab charted the amount of arsenic she received day by day, using a strand of her long black hair. What helped to convict Rene was that for the eight days he was sitting up on the Bow Mac sign, there wasn’t any sign of poison in her hair growth.

Three months after the murder, CKNW fired Rene and soon after, police arrested him—two days after he and Lolly applied for a marriage license. He was convicted and spent the next 12 years in jail. Both Rene and Lolly married other people. Rene died of cancer in 1982.

 

Posted in Murder houses | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Ghosts of Mole Hill

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Eve Lazarus

In honour of Halloween I’ll be running different house murder and ghosts stories this month from my book At Home with History.

Back in the 1960s, the City of Vancouver started buying up heritage houses in the West End’s Mole Hill with the intent to bulldoze them and double the size of Nelson Park. Mole Hill is tucked in behind St. Paul’s Hospital and the houses are a mix of Queen Anne and Edwardian that stretch in a square around Comox, Thurlow, Bute and Pendrell Streets.

The name sounds straight from the pages of Wind in the Willows, but Mole Hill is actually named after Henry Mole who built a house there in 1895.

Photographer: Norman Caple

Henry Mole residence - 1895 (demolished)

Blair Petrie, a resident, spearheaded a five-year campaign to save the houses. He researched past owners and wrote a book published in 1995. As part of his research, he made a couple of ghostly discoveries.  Continue reading →

Posted in House ghosts | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment