Thanks to all the owners who are hosting our Centenary signs for our 5th year. As in a few previous years, we have concentrated the signs in one area – on a couple of blocks just east of The Drive on 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Easy to visit on your next visit to Continental Coffee!
Select the map for information on each house.
Here is our map for the set of houses, at least 100 years old, we have chosen this year. There is a large cluster of them on Ferndale Street, reflecting the legacy of builder George Tyson more than a century ago.
This is the fourth year of our project to celebrate Grandview’s Edwardian-era heritage buildings. Links to the other three years are on the navigation bar at the top of this page.
We thank the owners for their stewardship of the houses and their willingness to share them, through the display of the signs, with the community!
At our next meeting on September 17th, there will be a review of the houses and a modest celebration (i.e. cake!), along with our usual presentations and discussions.
We had another exciting and stimulating meeting of the Grandview Heritage Group last night, with about 20 folks in attendance. The topics we discussed were as wide-ranging as ever.
All in all, another worthwhile event from GHG!
About 20 people showed up at the boardroom at Britannia Community Centre for the monthly GHG meeting.
• the launch party for the 2014 Centenary Signs, with cake and refreshments, will be at 11 am Saturday June 28th at Mosaic Park at the corner of Charles and McLean in the heart of the “west of The Drive” area we’ve highlighted with this year’s set of houses. There will be an email reminder to everyone and we hope that the occupants of the houses who have agreed to host the signs this year can come along.
• Michael described the recent policy changes the city has instituted as part of its Heritage Action Plan: a one-year moratorium on demolitions of pre-1940 houses in First Shaughnessy; a new, interim checklist to determine pre-1940 “character houses” that the city is using while it formalizes an inventory of them; suggestions by city staff for carrots and sticks that would encourage house owners to retain character houses rather than demolish them; and, the implications of the city’s deconstruction and recycling policies that will force demolishers of character houses to divert 90% of the material from the landfill into salvage and re-use. There was a lot of discussion and questions. The policies, although city-wide, are specifically targeted to try to reduce the numbers of demolitions on the big lots of west-side neighbourhoods like Point Grey and Kerrisdale, where there is a considerable business opportunity (i.e. the ability to construct a much larger house) compared with that available on the standard 33 x 120 foot lots of Grandview and other east-side communities; the implications for communities like Grandview will, hopefully, be an increased awareness of the value of the smaller 1920s-1930s houses and more flexible city regulations to encourage their retention.
• There was a brief report on the plan, in abeyance for several months, to create permanent plaques for Grandview heritage houses and offer them to the 74 owners/occupants of the Centenary houses from 2012, 2013 and this year. More effort will go into finalizing research on the houses for the wiki and sourcing a plaque that will be durable (more so, at least, than the one installed at the Shelly’s sign at Victoria and William, which has faded badly after a year).
• Penny showed slides and offered hilarious commentary on her recent trip to Kansas’s depopulated towns of fine old buildings standing vacant under The Big Sky. And Eric, self-described “Amateur House Mechanic,” gave a brief presentation on the stone walls and foundations of vintage Grandview, including demonstrating how to split granite blocks with hand tools, part of his fascinating series of talks on the inner workings of early Vancouver houses.
The next meeting will be at 7 pm on Thursday, July 17th (the third Thursday of the month, right?) in the boardroom at Britannia Community Centre.
For the third year in a row, we have celebrated two-dozen Grandview houses that are at least 100 years old.
This year’s set focuses on groups of historic houses and includes, for the first time, a number of houses west of Commercial Drive – a sometimes overlooked historic area that has been infilled with quite a number of apartment buildings. It also features an apartment building for the first time: the one at Salsbury and Parker, built in 1911 when about 52% of Vancouverites were tenants – a proportion, incidentally, that is the same today.
We will be celebrating in our usual way this set of houses on the morning of Saturday, June 28th: mark your calendars and check back here to confirm time and location.
Open the map with this link.
There was a heavy rainstorm and a wintry wind last night, but still the came out for the latest of our regular monthly meetings. As always, the meeting was full of erudite and fun stuff: We discussed:
As many of you will know, we meet on the third Thursday of each month, at 7:00pm in the Britannia Board Room in the Info Centre (Commercial & Napier) and the next meeting is rapidly approaching — this Thursday.
The highlight of the evening will be Eric Philip’s illustrated talk on Glass in his remarkable Heritage Mechanicals and Materials series. Those who were there won’t soon forget last month’s teaser! Come along and see the real thing.
We will also discuss this year’s experience working with a university student, and compare it to the previous year’s experience, in order to answer the question: Should we keep doing this?
Other topics will include Heritage Vancouver’s Top 10 Endangered listing for Commercial Drive, a replacement for the Shelly plaque, and the schedule for the 2014 Centenary Celebration house signs project. And, of course, any other relevant topic that springs to mind..
Hope to see you there on Thursday
We had about twenty people at our meeting last night, with a couple of new visitors. I don’t think anyone was disappointed with all that we managed to cover in a couple of hours.
Another great meeting; I think we are really getting into our stride now.
The next meeting of the Grandview Heritage Group is this coming Thursday, 20th March, at 7:00pm at the Britannia Board Room. The agenda at this point includes:
Michael’s presentation is a lead up to our 2014 Centenary Signs walk on Sunday. We will be meeting outside the Britannia Library at 9:30am and we will be exploring the area west of Britannia to Clark and north to Venables. Please join us on Sunday even if you can’t make Thursday’s meeting!
After some preliminary work, we are now ready to put together the list of buildings that we will celebrate with centenary signs this year.
We have picked out some spots that we really want to include this time out, but we need to find more possibilities. The rule is that the building must be at least 100 years old and not changed too much from its original design. As usual, we will begin the process with a walk (or walks) that often turns into a vibrant educational tour for those who join us.
The first walk this year will begin at 9:30am on Sunday 23rd March and we will gather in the square outside the Britannia Library entrance. We will be walking through the area west to Clark and probably north to Venables, in an area where many of our earliest builders plied their trade. The walk will be completed by noon and is open to anyone who cares to join us.
Our house styles expert, Michael Kluckner, will be with us to point out interesting architectural details, and no doubt one or more of our historians will be able to supply more details on the history of the area and the builders.
In advance of the walk, at our regular monthly meeting on Thursday 20th March, Michael will give a presentation of a primer he calls “H is for Heritage”. More details on the meeting will be available next week.
