In an interview a few days ago, I talked about the buildings along Kingsway, and why I’m so torn between my default position of wanting to preserve what remains, but also being ready for the new to creep in. I said that for some reason few, if any, of the buildings along Kingsway have quite enough charm or character for people to bother fighting to keep them—there is no possibility of the strip becoming a heritage-based district like, say, Vancouver’s Main Street or Yaletown. And I think the reason has more to do with Kingsway’s age than anything else. Looking at photos in the archives, it’s clear that this old boulevard was lined with stores and services from very early on in Vancouver’s history. Many of them were built in the late 1800’s and very early 1900’s, and at that time, buildings weren’t intended to last for a century—they were basically wooden boxes with false fronts, erected with a this-will-do-for-now mentality, from what I can see. At that time people were moving along and settling wherever they found an opportunity, and so the goal was to get something up, not plan for the long haul. For this reason, many of these buildings would have fallen apart after a few decades, and so I suspect that many of them had crumbled by the 60’s and were replaced then, during a time of pretty uninspiring building design. The odd one that did survive is just an old square shell, with no real redeeming qualities aside from its age. The areas that went up in the 20’s, even, were built to last a little longer—by then Vancouver had been settled for some time and would have felt more permanent. I suspect poor Kingsway was simply born a little too early, and reborn a little too late. Soon we’ll see how it fares the third time around.
On closer inspection, my last Kingsway illustration, based on an early 40’s archive photo, turns out to be one block west of Knight Street, at the intersection of Clark. And in the middle of that block two of the buildings from that time remain—I suspect this is one of the structures in the distance at the far left side of the illustration in Volume Four. And, in case you’re wondering, the jag in the middle isn’t a slip of my wrist, it’s very much a feature of the building. In studying this drooping old brute tonight, I was left with one overriding question: what could it possibly be like upstairs?
The rest of the series can be found here…
