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Some long gone greats: historical Victoria photos


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#661 Mike K.

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Posted 08 June 2020 - 08:59 AM

Yeah, there's that story, for sure. But we also need to consider that times were different back then. Having that brewery there was a liability. Who would buy it? And who would buy it expecting to attract a brewery at a time when the big brands were being consolidated across the country and the microbrew industry wasn't even a concept?


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#662 Rob Randall

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Posted 08 June 2020 - 09:17 AM

Yeah, there's that story, for sure. But we also need to consider that times were different back then. Having that brewery there was a liability. Who would buy it? And who would buy it expecting to attract a brewery at a time when the big brands were being consolidated across the country and the microbrew industry wasn't even a concept?

 

Oh, you young kids and your tenuous grasp of history.

 

The Labatt brewery was demolished in 1982. Vancouver Island brewing started making mircrobrews just two years later.


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#663 Mike K.

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Posted 08 June 2020 - 09:30 AM

VIB was a product of Labatt’s flight. And to this day their operation requires 1/10th of the capacity of Labatt’s brewery (likely far less).

It’s only in the last five years that Phillips has started to approach the scale of Labatt’s brewery and even for them the size of the thing would likely be a decade+ of growth too large from today’s production.*

*VHF stats.

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#664 aastra

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Posted 10 June 2020 - 06:43 PM

Change for the better:

 

 

Daily Colonist
August 8, 1913

Dominion Architect on Inspection Visit

 

Mr. Ewart, who is one of the best known officials of the Government, having occupied his present position for the last sixteen years, and having designed some of the most important Government buildings throughout the country, has not been in the city of Victoria for five years, and when he arrived yesterday he was greatly impressed with the altered appearance of the place.

...he expressed the opinion that in no section of the Dominion was there greater progress being made at the present time than out here in British Columbia.

 

"When I look around the leading thoroughfares of Victoria," he said, "and see the splendid structures you have erected all along them, I am forced to the conclusion that Victoria has made strides as big, if not bigger, than any single place in the country during the past few years."


Edited by aastra, 10 June 2020 - 06:45 PM.


#665 aastra

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Posted 18 July 2020 - 11:13 AM

Methinks this pic says a lot about Victoria. A modern spandrel-tastic building was inserted right at the heart of formerly beautiful (and increasingly less beautiful) Broad Street. The old Colonist building right next door would soon be eating the wrecking ball.

 

pic from city of Victoria archives

 

M01457_141.jpg

 

 

*****

 

I think this next pic has already made an appearance in this thread but let's look at it again. That ground floor is amazing. Towering windows, fine lines, ornate details...

 

pic from city of Victoria archives

 

M00639_141.jpg


Edited by aastra, 18 July 2020 - 11:19 AM.

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#666 Nparker

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Posted 18 July 2020 - 12:06 PM

Could use more ground floors like this in new buildings.



#667 aastra

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Posted 23 July 2020 - 09:36 PM

At a glance, can you recognize the location? Looking in which direction along which street?



#668 Rob Randall

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Posted 23 July 2020 - 09:41 PM

I think the Owl Drug building was demolished to make way for what now is the Cactus Club.



#669 aastra

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Posted 19 August 2020 - 07:40 AM

^That's looking up Fort from Douglas. Campbell Building is on the right corner and Jones Building is the next large building.

 

Cleaning the Campbell Building in the 1930s...

 

*****

 

Here's a 1920s pic of Yates & Quadra:

 

M06632_141.jpg

 

pic from https://archives.vic...d-quadra-street


Edited by aastra, 19 August 2020 - 07:44 AM.

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#670 aastra

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Posted 13 September 2020 - 11:44 AM

Copied from the Fernwood thread:

 

Daily Colonist
November 21, 1963

Solid Effort Praised

 

"Too many of our buildings are just plunked right on the sidewalks without any OPEN SPACE." (aastra steps away briefly to vomit. Why are Victoria's streetscapes so Victorian? That's obviously all wrong. The government will fix it.)

 

I've been trying to expose this contradiction for a long time. Modern Victorians claim to be preserving and celebrating Victoria's appealing built form... by inverting and subverting Victoria's appealing built form. But I was surprised to see it laid out so plainly in that quote.

 

Suffice it to say, if Cormorant Street had been closed to vehicle traffic and turned into something more like Bastion Square, and if the old buildings had been restored instead of erased, and if the awkward & almost flatiron-ish property had been preserved... it would be a jewel of a space. A tourist attraction unto itself.

 

The Centennial Square project was all about undoing everything that was unique or interesting about Victoria. The mission was anti-urban, anti-heritage, car-centric, overplanned, etc. This is why it ended up being such a tremendous failure. If the intention had been to fit a new public space into the old city then methinks it would have worked. But instead the intention was to use a new public space as the excuse for wiping out some of the old city. Read the narration from the "A Townscape Rediscovered" film and tell me it reflects a deep love for the city's old urban soul.

 

--

 

Improve Victoria by replacing the old downtown with suburban autopia:

 

Daily Colonist
July 7, 1963

Stage Set for Centennial Square Creation

Main east-west thoroughfare will be new role for Pandora Avenue, which will curve through park-like setting in Centennial Square to provide access to Cormorant at Government Street.

 

 

--

 

There's always great urgency when the authorities want to blow a big hole in something. Meanwhile, the stall tactics against preservation of the Northern Junk buildings have been in effect for nearly 11 years as I type this:

 

 

Daily Colonist
December 14, 1962

CIVIC SQUARE DRAWS BIG "YES"

Victoria last night surged into its second century of municipal government with a smashing four-to-one endorsement by ratepayers of the Centennial Square civic plaza project.

"The city is on the move," said a jubilant Mayor R. H. Wilson. "This magnificent endorsement of the scheme is a clear indication that the people of Victoria want immediate action, which city council will provide,"

QUICK ACTION

"This is the first indication of solid progress towards a more beautiful and economically healthy Victoria,"

Ald. Arthur Dowell said... yesterday's vote ensure the Centennial Square project will "proceed with all haste."

Ald. Austin Curtis said the project was "the finest thing that has happened to Victoria for many years" and would mean a lot to the future growth of the city.

City planner Roderick Clack, who conceived the original scheme and worked on plans for Centennial Square with architectural consultants, said last night's victory was "the breakthrough we've been waiting for."

"This shows a real burst of confidence in Victoria's future," Mayor Wilson said. "There's a lot of life in the old girl yet."
 

 

--

 

 

Daily Colonist
November 21, 1963

Solid Effort Praised

Victoria's Centennial Square captured the imagination and praise of downtown leaders...

 

It met with immediate applause from business, planning, and civic leaders.

Here are some of the comments noted the day the project was announced 16 months ago.

"It's an excellent project," said A.F. Walters, president of the Victoria Chamber of Commerce.

"It will hold the town together in an admirable way."

"Improvement has been badly needed for a long time in the downtown area, and this will do it."

A.H. Roberts, director of the Capital Region Planning Board, said:

"I think it's a very well designed scheme and I particularly like the way it's based on the historical foundation of municipal government."

"I'm very pleased they are not scrapping the City Hall building, for if any city is to have roots and stability it must have some continuity of history."

"You can only see this physically in civic buildings." (aastra steps away briefly to vomit)

Open Spaces

"I believe the open square and park is very important, probably as important as the buildings themselves."

"Too many of our buildings are just plunked right on the sidewalks without any OPEN SPACE." (aastra steps away briefly to vomit. Why are Victoria's streetscapes so Victorian? That's obviously all wrong. The city government will fix it.)

"I think it will help that section of the city and I hope it will be followed quickly with further downtown development, including the Chinatown and Broad Street malls."

"It's rather interesting that when this precinct is completed and Pandora is re-aligned and linked to Johnson Street Bridge, the municipal halls of Oak Bay, Victoria, and Esquimalt will all be on the same street, although it has different names." (aastra says: what an amazing coincidence that all the authorities would be based along Pandora's avenue, the street of worldly woes and evils)

"It's certainly a much needed face-lifting for the city centre," said Oak Bay Reeve George Murdoch.

"Everything that stimulates the city centre is bound to benefit everyone else in the area."

"Oak Bay is very happy to see this plan presented."

Saanich Reeve Stanley Murphy said the project "is a good example of the forward-looking approach."

 

--


Edited by aastra, 13 September 2020 - 12:22 PM.


#671 aastra

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Posted 13 September 2020 - 11:48 AM

Yet another one for the "buildings that have gained or lost levels" (or otherwise been expanded) file. It's amazing how something so controversial could have happened so many times without causing any harm to anything:

 

M00443_141.jpg

 

pic from https://archives.vic...vernment-street

 

--

 

M01371_141.jpg

 

pic from https://archives.vic...vernment-street



#672 aastra

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:00 PM

First the old town was about projecting balconies, and then it was about recessed balconies, and then it was about no balconies (and then it was also about no building, in this specific example):

 

e-01559_141.jpg
pic from https://search-bcarc...lbcmuseum.bc.ca

 

**********

 

i-20610_141.jpg

pic from https://search-bcarc...lbcmuseum.bc.ca



#673 aastra

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:07 PM

Here you go! So I guess that building did have a fire? So many old town buildings lost to fires:

 

i-31954_141.jpg

pic from https://search-bcarc...lbcmuseum.bc.ca



#674 Rob Randall

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:26 PM

And those amazing arches. 

 

This "modern" building tried to harken back to the glorious age of arches but fell short of the mark.

 

Capture.JPG

 



#675 aastra

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:30 PM

I never even thought about it. I suppose you're right. But why the setback for the main part of the building? Totally out of place.



#676 Rob Randall

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:35 PM

That was the era when architects thought they were clever by having the building be anything but flush level right up to the lot line. It could be steps up, steps down, set back, inside out with a tree growing up through the middle, whatever. Setbacks were supposed to let the light in, open up the space. Anything else was "old fashioned".


Edited by Rob Randall, 28 October 2020 - 06:36 PM.


#677 aastra

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:40 PM

Wow, here's the best picture I think we've ever seen of this place. It was a finer building than I expected. Too bad about that bricked-up ground floor.

 

"described-variously-as-being-located-at-southeast-corner-of-cormorant-pandora-and-store-street-and-corner-of-yates-and-wharf"

 

...even though it was actually on Johnson at Store Street (you can zoom in to see it in this vintage air photo over at vintageairphotos.com).

 

i-31957_141.jpg

 

pic from https://search-bcarc...lbcmuseum.bc.ca

 

*****

 

Here's the pic we've seen before on this board, showing the JSB in the background:

 

M01287_141.jpg

pic from https://archives.vic...-store-street-3


Edited by aastra, 29 October 2020 - 08:16 AM.

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#678 aastra

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 06:59 PM

^That modern building on Herald with the arched windows actually did a decent job re: the fineness of the curves and the dividers between the windows. Imagine if it had no setback and a more conventional commercial ground floor: you might even wonder if it was an old building that had been modernized and stripped of ornamentation.

 

I've made the observation before, how some Victorians have been more concerned about preserving the modernized post-1950 old town rather than preserving or restoring the old town as it actually was. In this case it's as if they purposely designed a building that was trying to fit with the "after modernization" vibe.



#679 aastra

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 07:05 PM

Great pic of the lost details in the cornice of the recently restored building on the corner of Yates and Government. It's too bad that stuff couldn't be restored or recreated.



#680 Rob Randall

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 07:08 PM

It's not still hiding underneath that horrible cornice facade? Tragic!



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