722 replies to this topic

[jonny]

Victoria's biggest architectural loss IMO. This was a gem Rock Bay couldn't afford to lose.

 

OMFG that was amazing. I wish I didn't know this building used to exist. 

[jonny]

But why? Is it the dark colour of the brick that puts us off? The inset storefronts? The lack of detail? The roofline on the new building is more articulated, in theory it should be more attractive.

 

Maybe Modernism was a bust and humans actually crave extraneous ornamentation.

 

It looks like a strip mall building. 

[aastra]

It's okay. The ground floor gets some of the fundamentals right. But I'm still inclined to lump it together with some other 1970s/1980s buildings that I generally don't like: Harbour Square, the Salvation Army, the office building on Pandora recently converted to apartments, the Capitol 6, the Waddington/940 Blanshard complex, and some others.

 

Characteristics:

- these buildings tend to be almost comically overdone with one-note brick coverage (as if somebody had been searching for one attribute -- heck, one word: "brick" -- to summarize the entirety of Victoria's architectural inventory up to that point),

- the lines put too much emphasis on the horizontal rather than the vertical,

- the overall effect = squat, blunt, and bland instead of narrow, fine, and detailed

- the minimal details and one-note brick coverage tend to make for a very heavy & overwhelming effect

[Nparker]

1980s post-modernism has not held up well to the test of time, at least not locally. Its nearest chronological predecessor, Brutalism, despite its detractors, was usually honest in its architectural expression. It rarely pretended to be something it wasn't.

[Rob Randall]

^^You forgot it was the era of the inside out architecture. Entrances couldn't be flush with the building, they had to be pushed under a shadowy colonnade. Or up a set of stairs. Or down a set of stairs. Or a tree had to be growing out of the roofless lobby. I'm sure these things were the bee's knees when introduced.

[Nparker]

...Entrances couldn't be flush with the building, they had to be pushed under a shadowy colonnade. Or up a set of stairs. Or down a set of stairs...

You mean like this?

[aastra]

Methinks the conference centre could be much better if somebody were to take it as it is and just sharpen it and refine it and class it up. The materials, the colour palette, everything. Same building, same concept, but fancier and more expensive. Rather than trying to completely re-style it, I mean.

[aastra]

Not really long gone greats, but just more of that lost urban texture...

 

Another pic...

Edited by aastra, 13 September 2020 - 11:22 AM.

[aastra]

Yet another example of abundant glass coverage on an old building. Good luck trying to restore an old building back to this. People would say it doesn't belong.

[G-Man]

Totally. Wow that one looks great. I also had no idea that the Beehive had been around that long.

[aastra]

Fine building proposed for Yates and Quadra. So did this hotel not get built but end up morphing into the smaller project that did get built, only to be modernized a few decades later into the thing that's there now?

 

edit: wait a sec... I was assuming this would have been on the west side of Quadra between Yates and View, but it sounds like they mean on the east side of Quadra between Yates and Johnson?

 

 

Daily Colonist
March 21, 1911

Savoy Hotel for Yates and Quadra Streets

Ground will be broken... at the northeast corner of Yates and Quadra streets upon the Savoy Hotel, a modern six storey steel frame fireproof building which will be second to none in the city.

...A grand main entrance is provided on Quadra Street opening into a marble-lined corridor leading to the main rotunda.

Hotel cafe, hotel offices and dining room will be situation on the first floor and there will also be five stores in the building facing on Yates and Quadra streets.

Provision has also been made for a roof garden...

The building is to be modern in all respects following the lines of some of the most renowned hostelries of the east.

Edited by aastra, 13 September 2020 - 11:23 AM.

[Nparker]

Lest anyone need reminding, here's the architectural magnificence of the NE corner of Quadra & Yates today.

[Rob Randall]

A 1911 issue of the Colonist mentions plans for the Savoy Hotel (address not mentioned) and the Savoy Mansions at Fort and Quadra. Not to be confused with the 19th century Savoy Hotel on Government Street.

 

I assume it was never built which was a shame because it would have been a bold new defining landmark at the edge of town.

[aastra]

Or, it would have been demolished during the 1960s/1970s along with the Campbell Building, Permanent Loan, YMCA, Jones Building, etc.

 

Or, it would have remained but become dilapidated, thus hastening the transformation of the Quadra/Pandora area into downtown Victoria's east side.

 

Maybe it's better that it was never built at all.

Edited by aastra, 07 July 2019 - 12:25 PM.

[aastra]

Fine old brick house in James bay:

 

 

pic from https://archives.vic...-in-james-bay-3

[LJ]

Looks to be in pretty bad repair.

[aastra]

The guys doing the demolishing on the right side of the pic would probably take that as a compliment.

 

Here's another angle:

 

 

pic from https://archives.vic...se-in-james-bay

Edited by aastra, 08 July 2019 - 07:11 PM.

[aastra]

In the early 1910s it seems there were four ten-story buildings in the works at the same time:

• Permanent Loan Building at Douglas and Johnson - Eventually built, but now demolished
• Weiler Building at Douglas and Kane (now Broughton) - Never built
• Rorison/Albion Trust Building at Wharf and Government (future Imperial Oil Station/Tourism Victoria property?) - Never built, but plenty of blasting/excavation
• B.C. Electric Terminal Building at Douglas and Pandora - Never built

I suppose these projects are what inspired the following:
 

 

Daily Colonist
April 9, 1913

Ten Storeys is Limit

By an amendment to the building by-law passed by the City Council last night, the limit of buildings in the city was put at ten storeys. Alderman Dilworth objected, claiming that a person owning a valuable piece of real estate ought to be allowed to erect a structure of greater height...

...the concensus of opinion of the aldermen was to the effect that there is no necessity in Victoria of buildings of greater height than ten storeys.

Edited by aastra, 16 October 2019 - 10:39 AM.

[Mike K.]

And there we remained for office building heights for all eternity. Funny how things work.

Jack Davis = 8
First Island = 9
Sussex = 11
St. Andrew’s = 10
CIBC = 12
Rohani = 11
TD = 8

And finally we got 750 Pandora at 13.

[aastra]

B.C. Electric building and streetcar terminal:

 

Daily Colonist
January 22, 1913
 

Site Chosen for Location of B.C. Electric Suburban Terminals

A Magnificent Site Has Been Acquired at the Northeast Corner of Pandora Avenue and Douglas Street

 

MAMMOTH TEN-STOREY BUILDING TO GO UP

Great Structure to Be Permanent Home of Suburban Lines -- Location Is in Very Heart of the City

Exemplifying in the most eloquent fashion the tremendous pace at which Victoria is expanding into a great city and at the same time the unbounded confidence in its future possessed by one of the big commercial institutions of the Dominion, is the announcement which The Colonist is enabled to make that the British Columbia Electric Railway Company, Limited, has acquired a large area of property on the northeast corner of Douglas Street and Pandora Avenue as a site on which to erect a mammoth office building which will also house the suburban terminal station to handle the business resultant from the opening of traffic on the tram line to the end of the Saanich Peninsula.

A New Civic Centre

...the cars will reach the building from Douglas Street via Cormorant Street on three tracks running through the terminal station, each track capable of holding trains of three cars each, to Pandora Avenue, down that thoroughfare to Douglas and so out to Saanich.

"In considering the question of locating a site for the suburban terminals we have been impressed with the growing commercial importance of the section where this property is situation, and the company was exceedingly anxious to bring their passengers on the suburban line to the very heart of the city. Pandora Avenue, when the widening work shall have been completed, will be one of the most imposing thoroughfares in the city, running right through to Oak Bay on the east...

Fine Strategical Site

"Then again, we were impressed with the significance which attaches to the determination of the Hudson's Bay Company to errect a great departmental store on the corner of Fisguard and Douglas Street. This one thing in itself has been held by many to suggest that a new centre of civic activity would be constituted in that section..."

For the year 1909 the total number of passengers carried on all the local lines of the company was 5,093,509. Last year (1912) the total was slightly under 11,000,000, or to be exact, 10,976,690. The increase in the three years has aggregated no less than 116 per cent, a showing which few cities in the country can make.

The rapid growth of the city and the building up, especially, of the outlying sections, has necessitated extensions to the system, the Ross Bay, Hillside Avenue and Burnside Avenue extensions as well as the double tracking of many sections of the old routes...

Edited by aastra, 04 October 2019 - 08:46 AM.