Photograph by Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

The Marine Building penthouse is, incredibly, more or less intact, although it’s now used as an office.

When it was built in 1930, the Marine Building was the tallest building in the British Empire. To show off its dazzling waterfront view, an observation deck was built on the top floor, with a huge wraparound terrace.

The cost of taking in the view was a mere 25 cents. But that proved too much for the masses during the Great Depression, and the observation deck was soon closed. By 1933, the builders were in such dire financial straits they sold the art deco masterpiece for $900,000, a fraction of the $2.3 million it cost to build it.

A.J.T. Taylor ran the British Pacific Building Co., the new owner. He decided to install the company offices on the 19th floor, then came up with an ingenious idea for the observation deck – to convert it into a penthouse apartment for Taylor, his wife and their two kids.

The Marine Building penthouse became one of the legendary spaces in Vancouver, a two-storey art deco wonder. Incredibly, it’s still more or less intact, although it’s now used as an office.

The current tenant is Phil Boname of Urbanics Consultants. He will be hosting a $100 a pop fundraiser for Heritage Vancouver at the penthouse tonight, and even allowed The Vancouver Sun in to take a peek.

It doesn’t disappoint.

“It’s special because it’s part of the whole experience of the Marine Building, that jazz age-art deco style,” says Don Luxton of Heritage Vancouver.

“Taylor had amazing taste. He was inspired by Rockefeller Center [in New York]. It has that kind of high art deco movie set feel to it.”

The observation deck was originally one big room, with a 20-foot high ceiling. Taylor installed a mezzanine on the western side which contained two bedrooms and an open sitting area. Underneath the mezzanine was the dining room and kitchen.

He raised the floor two feet in the living room so that you could take in the panoramic views through the windows while sitting in a chair. But the living room still has an 18-foot ceiling, and with light streaming in through the 12-foot-high windows, it’s a very dramatic space.

“It’s very inspirational,” says Boname.

“People tell me my voice changed when I moved in here. The tone became philosophical, softer.”

He laughs like a guy who can’t believe his luck. So would you, if you got to work in a drop-dead gorgeous space with a teak floor, an enormous black marble fireplace and a curved built-in bookcase.

There have some changes, of course. The Marine Building underwent some questionable renos in the early ’80s, when some teak walls and a teak balcony were either removed, covered with drywall or painted white. A glass wall was installed in the mezzanine, breaking up the open plan and cutting off the air circulation. The original chandelier was even replaced with a more modern one.

Thankfully the upstairs bathroom survived, completely intact. It is out of this world, with walls done up in green, gold, black and blue tiles, an aqua-marine floor and a butter-coloured tub. There’s a button to call the help, a stainless steel rack to heat the towels and a window which gives you a deadly view of the harbour.

One of the quirks of the space is that the mezzanine windows are the top of the first floor windows, so they’re all at floor level. Another quirk is that you step down from the living room into the old dining room and kitchen, cause it’s at the original level of the floor. The dining room is now an office, but the galley kitchen is still there.

You access the terrace through a door in the old dining room. Sadly city planners allowed the new Fairmont Pacific hotel/condos to be built directly north, which cuts down the water view. But the vistas are still breathtaking, whether you’re looking up Hastings, Burrard, or out to Coal Harbour.

The coolest aspect of the terrace is a pair of lion statues on the eastern side. Taylor was part of the consortium that built the Lion’s Gate Bridge and developed the British Properties; the statues are small “maquette” versions of the lions Charles Margera sculpted for either end of the bridge.

Taylor didn’t actually live there long; his wife apparently hated living on the top of an office building, even after Taylor installed a small private elevator so you didn’t have to walk from the 18th floor to the 20th. After Taylor moved out, the city directory lists a Mrs. Mary Fisher in the penthouse from 1941 to 1944. In 1947 the penthouse was converted to an office by the Spencer department store family, and it’s been an office ever since.

Still, with a bit of imagination it’s easy to see it as your own art deco mansion in the sky. There may be bigger and more opulent modern penthouses in Vancouver, but none are cooler.

At press time there was only one ticket left for the Heritage Vancouver fundraiser, which takes place from 5:30 p.m to 7:30 p.m. tonight. For information, go to the Heritage Vancouver website: www.heritagevancouver.org/, phone 604-331-8430 or e-mail info@heritagevancouver.org.

Heritage Vancouver invites you to a unique opportunity to explore the two floors of the ultra-elegant private penthouse at the top of Vancouver’s finest heritage building. Enjoy the Art Deco atmosphere and the fabulous view, hear about its unique history, and share your experiences, stories, and photos of the Marine Building.

The Penthouse has many of its original features still intact, and is currently the office of Urbanics Consultants Ltd, our generous host and sponsor for the event. Donald Luxton and Chuck Davis will intrigue you with stories of the architecture and history of the Marine Building.

Proceeds support the work of Heritage Vancouver. Tax receipts will be issued. Purchase your tickets early as there are a limited number of spaces for this exclusive event.

Friday, March 6, 2009
5:30pm to 7:30pm

Marine Building Penthouse
# 2000 – 255 Burrard Street

Tickets $100
Wine and hors d’oeuvres included

Online by Paypal
Print and bring your receipt

Or mail your cheque to
Heritage Vancouver Society
PO Box 3336
Main Post Office
Vancouver, BC
V6B 3Y3

Heritage Vancouver

Heritage Vancouver informs our community about opportunities to appreciate, preserve, and restore our heritage structures and neighbourhoods through events, tours, films, forums, and reports.

Heritage structures are community landmarks that are tangible expressions of the era in which they were created and which contribute to the character, attractiveness, and quality of life in our neighbourhoods.

Heritage structures identify and define our communities, connect us to our history and our diverse heritage, and are our legacy for the enjoyment of future generations.

Heritage Vancouver works with developers, architects, businesses, associations, community groups, and arts and cultural organizations to preserve our heritage structures and neighbourhoods.

Urbanics Consultants

Phil Boname founded Urbanics Consultants in 1976 as a firm of land economists and development management consultants.

The firm provides real estate development, project management, and economic impact services to create viable mixed use commercial, industrial, and residential projects including hotels and resorts, recreation and tourism facilities, shopping centres, downtown revitalization and waterfront development projects, and arts and cultural centres in North America and around the world.

Urbanics has been involved in major mixed use projects such as Granville Island, Whistler Village, Westminster Quay, Lonsdale Quay, Prince’s Island Village, and South Edmonton Common.

Why Heritage Matters

Don Luxton, Phil Boname,
Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles, and Christopher Gaze
talk about why heritage matters.

Why Heritage Matters Film

A group of community members who are interested in saving and restoring the York Theatre met at City Hall on December 6, 2007 with the new owner of the York Theatre and a number of representatives from the Planning Department, Cultural Affairs, and Heritage Group for the City of Vancouver.

The History and Vision for the York Theatre tells the story of why the York Theatre should be saved and restored. Click here

It was clear from this meeting that the new owner and developer, Paul Phillips of Edge Homes, has no interest in preserving the theatre. During the city strike, he was led to believe there would be no opposition to the demolition of the theatre and a townhouse development.

It is now clear that there is considerable support from the community for restoring and maintaining the theatre from the many letters and emails members of the community wrote to City Council. Our work is not over. The developer has a vested interest in this property and every day that goes by costs him money.

It is urgent that we communicate our desire to preserve this cultural facility and to act quickly to find a solution that will work for the developer and the community.

Recently we lost the historic Imperial Theatre, most recently known as the Venus Theatre, on Main at Union Street. Though rundown in recent years, this was still a restorable and usable purpose-built theatre, discovered to be in excellent condition once the demolition started. It opened in 1912 with a performance of Il Trovatore.

Also lost recently is the lovely art deco turret building at Georgia and Richards, formerly used as the Fido display and sales centre. We must stop this demolition of our architectural and cultural heritage.

The Opportunity to Save The York Theatre

Buy the York Theatre. The contribution is clear. The risk of losing any capital invested is low. Financing can be arranged to make costs tax deductible. The community will appreciate the contribution, and the opportunity is open to be part of the creative team. It could be an individual, a foundation, a business, or a community organization like the Coal Harbour Society, or a cooperative of contributors.

Tom Durrie
Save the York Theatre Society
email tdurrie@telus.net
604-215-0019

Contributors to the Save the York Theatre Society

Clifford Cox, Dr. Stephen Drance, Tom Durrie, David Galpin, Christopher Gaze, Spencer Massie, Heather Redfern, José Verstappen

More on the York Theatre

The Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance wishes to express its strongest possible support for a civic initiative to help preserve and revitalize this precious and historic cultural facility.

At a time when public attention is on the significant lack of performing arts resources, the loss of this venue would be a crisis of vision and leadership. Having a theatre like the York destroyed through civic inaction in any cosmopolitan city would be just cause for dismay. That it could well happen here in Vancouver is deeply unsettling.

We urge Council to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the preservation of this theatre. We understand the Save the York Theatre Society will be presenting a comprehensive business plan for the restoration and re-development of the theatre. We further understand that time is of the essence and ask that any move toward demolition be delayed or halted.

We would like to confirm that there is strong support from the theatre community for the preservation of the York Theatre. We greatly appreciate the city’s initiative in launching a study on cultural facilities in 07/08. We also appreciate and thank the city for its efforts in broadly consulting the community in this process. However, while the city conducts this important work of thoroughly assessing the present and future needs for arts facilities of all types, we also encourage Council to act quickly in this particular set of circumstances to help preserve the York Theatre before it is torn down.

We think it would be a great shame if Vancouver loses one if its landmark theatres, a venue which represents a significant part of Vancouver’s cultural history.

Tanja Dixon Warren, President
Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance
January 10, 2008

email info@gvpta.ca
Call 604 608 6923
www.gvpta.ca

Proposed street front of the restored York Theatre – Downs-Archambault design 1982

A History and Vision for the York Theatre has been created by the Save the York Theatre Society. The Forum on the Future of Theatres reflected the community’s concerns about our last remaining opportunities to preserve and restore our heritage theatres. The need for theatre space in Vancouver is clear. The Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance confirms there is strong support from the theatre community. The City’s report on the Coal Theatre Arts Complex concluded there is a shortage of performance venues in the City. And the Vancouver East Cultural Centre indicated it could operate the theatre on an interim basis if it was returned to early use and restored fully later.

The Save the York Theatre Society met on December 18th to what consider steps could be taken to save the York. The group had met with representatives of the new owner and people from the City Planning and Cultural Affairs Departments at City Hall on December 6th to learn the developer was open to possibilities.

It will take time to answer the questions related to creating a future for the theatre – who might operate it, – who might use it, – and how its restoration and future operation could be financed.

Time is running out. Since the developers are open to conversation but anxious to move ahead on their project to realize a return on their investment, it was decided the best course of action would be to find someone willing to buy the York Theatre from the new owner and hold it on behalf of the community until these questions could be answered and plans created.

The contribution to the community is clear. The land would provide security for someone willing to do this so the risk of losing any capital invested is low. Financing can be arranged to make costs tax deductible. The community will appreciate the contribution and the opportunity is open to be part of the creative team. It could be an individual, a foundation, a business, a community organization like the Coal Harbour Arts Complex Society, or a cooperative of contributors. The property was purchased by the developer for just under a million dollars.

For more information and interest in this opportunity contact
Tom Durrie
Save the York Theatre Society
email tdurrie@telus.net
604-215-0019

More on the York Theatre

Townhouses planned for York site The new owners of the York Theatre on Commercial Drive plan to replace the theatre with eco-friendly townhouses.

Paul Phillips, president of EDG Homes Inc., which purchased the property last October as Vintage Development Corp. with business partners Small Favours Pictures Limited and 0805122 BC Limited, told the Straight he is not interested in preserving the theatre.

“Our interest is to develop an environmentally sensitive, LEED-certified townhome development there—a cutting-edge property in line with the EcoDensity of [Vancouver mayor] Mr. Sullivan’s dreams,” he said by phone. “It will be townhomes with attached garages, with roof gardens and low-toxicity materials.”

Phillips said he and his partners will submit their plans to the city within the next week or two, and expect development to begin in May or June this year.

Members of Vancouver’s arts community, led by Tom Durrie, the former general manager of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, have been campaigning to save the York Theatre since last fall. They now hope to find a way to purchase the property from the developers. “The idea is to buy time,” Durrie said.

Roger Chilton, chair of the Downtown Vancouver Association’s arts and culture committee and part of the campaign to save the theatre, told the Straight he’s confident someone will step forward with the necessary funds.

“Whoever ties up the capital wouldn’t lose money,” Chilton said, “but they’d make a huge contribution to the community holding their capital in this investment, which they could always resell.”

Phillips is not completely averse to the idea of selling his recently acquired property. “We’re businessmen and the property’s always for sale, I guess, at the right price,” he said.

This year marks the Centennial of the opening of Vancouver’s Pantages Theatre. One century ago, it stood for everything that was beautiful, new and exciting in theatre. Today, the Pantages remains all of that, – and it has also become a beacon of change and hope in the Downtown Eastside.

With the support of the City, the Pantages will be fully restored as the dazzler it once was and upgraded to modern technical standards. It has a superb acoustic, seats 650, and will offer new lobbies, a rehearsal studio, an enlarged pit, and every modern amenity. It will be restored with meticulous attention to its irreplaceable heritage value. And it will be managed in the public interest by the non-profit Pantages Theatre Arts Society on a long-term lease from its developer.

If you believe that live theatre will make a difference in the Downtown Eastside, please tell City Council. If you believe that Western Canada’s oldest theatre deserves to be saved and restored, please tell City Council. If your own company in music, dance, theatre, film, video, whatever your art may be, believes that you need and would use such a theatre, please tell City Council.

And if you see a chance to add a first class, mid-size facility to the performing arts in Vancouver, please tell City Council.

In the last two years, we have held more than 320 meetings in favour of the Pantages Project and toured more than 1400 people through it. You probably remember the day you first saw it. I do and I was astonished.

If we do this together, we will restore a theatre and renew a neighbourhood. If we do this well, the Pantages will last another hundred years.

We need your help. We need you to write a letter to The Mayor and Council, 453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver V5Y 1V4, in support of the Pantages.

Please contact me if you have questions, ideas, or support. Thank you

Peter Fairchild
President
Pantages Theatre Arts Society
email petertf@shaw.ca

All of these treasures are currently at risk of disappearing or being altered to the point that their heritage value becomes questionable. The most important thing missing from our understanding is that there is no heritage protection in the city, the province or the country that would stop anyone from demolishing a heritage building if they chose to take that action.

The Vogue Theatre is an excellent example. Its future is right now up in the air and even though it is a National Historic Site the current owner could decide to tear it down, and though he may be delayed by the process, there is nothing that would actually get in his way.

The fact that these buildings are threatened and there is nothing in place to protect them is largely unknown to the general public. This is an important overarching story that needs to be told.

Janet Leduc
Heritage Vancouver

The Past, Present and Future of Vancouver’s Japantown

Click images to enlarge

Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: Vancouver Museum, 1100 Chestnut Street
Admission: $5.00; Heritage Vancouver Members free
No advance registration required. Doors open at 6:30pm

Join City of Vancouver Planner Hugh McLean for a conversation on the “Past, Present and Future of Vancouver’s Japantown.” Hugh will present interesting information on the evolution of the area, its historical and cultural significance and discuss where the process is heading.

Number ten on Heritage Vancouver’s 2007 Top Ten Endangered list, this neighbourhood, centred around the 300-400 blocks of Powell Street, was the heart of Vancouver’s Japanese community. Over the past two decades, the accelerating decline of the Downtown East Side has hit Japantown particularly hard. The years of neglect have taken their toll, businesses have moved from the area and there has been a noticeable deterioration of the building stock. Due to a lack of heritage incentives the rehabilitation of the buildings has been minimal. This is an opportunity to have a frank conversation regarding the future of this historic neighbourhood. The City of Vancouver issued a Request for Proposal in December 2007 for an Historical and Cultural Review of the Powell Street area known as Japantown.

Read the PDF presentation

Read the consultants report

Hosted by Heritage Vancouver and Vancouver Community Forums

Recently, some of the region’s most historic buildings have fallen victim to the wrecker, smashing to dust an irreplaceable part of a city’s soul. Is there any way to save the remaining architectural masterpieces?

It was downtown Vancouver’s last building that could remind us of the 1930s – a whirling wedding cake of streamline stucco that most of us knew as the Fido outlet at Georgia and Richards, first built as the Collier Auto Showroom. It got knocked down early one morning during the civic strike, leaving one more empty-tooth slot in the mug’s face of downtown.

Then, on Dec. 6, the wrecking crews went to work on one of Arthur Erickson’s most world-renowned and influential houses, a grand sequence of portals and frames elegantly descending down a Horseshoe Bay cliffside. This 1963 house for David Graham was featured on the pages of Life magazine and leased as a love nest to Warren Beatty and Julie Christie when in town to shoot Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

West Vancouver resident Barry Downs, one of British Columbia’s most-respected house architects and authors, says “the Graham House was Arthur Erickson’s Fallingwater” – a reference to Frank Lloyd Wright’s career-reviving, rural Pennsylvania concrete and brick house, which similarly cascades over rocks down a hill.

The Georgia Street Collier/Fido showroom was a vision in white from when modernism was new, and the West Vancouver Graham House was the evolution of these same ideas of seeing architecture afresh, but tempered to our climate, our building materials, and West Coast lifestyles.

Someone broke the law, surely, when these two got whacked?

Alas, no.

These losses draw attention to the weakness of British Columbia’s heritage legislation, as neither building had meaningful legal protection, and their owners needed almost nothing except a perfunctory demolition permit to excise these two crucial visual reminders of how we lived in the 20th century. Heritage advocates worry that the loss of these high-profile downtown Vancouver and West Vancouver buildings will clear the way for an end-of-the-building-boom destruction frenzy for many more, a kind of demolition derby.

Herb Stovel – head of heritage studies at Carleton University and one of Canada’s leading preservationists – says B.C. heritage legislation and programs are strong in the soft strategies of convincing and cajoling owners to preserve our history, but weak on legal guarantees to prevent demolitions like these. Prof. Stovel says B.C. is having some success with the “nurture and support” of conservation efforts, but cautions, “Governments need to preserve and protect buildings, too.” He notes that heritage-protection efforts are significantly blunted by a clause in B.C. heritage legislation requiring public compensation if designation reduces potential private redevelopment profits.

Heritage designation – or as the Americans call it, the “landmarking” of private buildings without owner’s approval – is commonplace in the don’t-tread-on-me capitalist United States, and a crucial historic preservation tool in every other nation of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

American preservation efforts are powered by the private sector, in large part because of tax incentives instituted under former president Ronald Reagan. With this public intervention into private real-estate markets in the name of preserving Mom-and-Apple-Pie America, maybe the Harper government will come to realize it can please Bonspiel and Tim Hortons Canada through similar tax changes here (starting with the brewing controversy over an entirely non-elitist construction, Kingsway’s 2400 Court Motel.)

Canada’s federal historic-sites protection for private buildings is even weaker than our provincial laws, in large part because of resistance to our central government asserting powers over heritage. Heritage preservation straddles land use and cultural concerns, and federal activism is seen to threaten entrenched constitutional rights of the provinces, especially Quebec. Federal political systems, however, have not stopped Australia and Germany from implementing strong heritage programs at both national and state levels.

B.C.’s weak heritage legislation is the legacy of both Socred/Liberal and NDP governments, right and left both eschewing perceptions of cultural elitism in preserving our best buildings at the cost of private development rights. Consequently, we all lose a common good – a sense of our own past. With every demolition, Metro Vancouver comes closer to status as a muscular and aggressive zombie-town, with no brain and no heart.

At both municipal and provincial levels, heritage efforts are understaffed and underfunded, with most current efforts devoted to research on sites and creative advice to owners and developers, backed up with modest grants (available to designated properties only) for their upkeep and occasional restoration. This means many micro successes – the replacement of rotting eave ornaments on many Edwardian former doctors’ residences, for example – but a few macro failures, such as the recent demolitions, and those which are likely to follow in the current regulatory climate.

At a level below official designation is the largely honorific category of heritage registers – West Vancouver’s is currently being compiled, while Vancouver’s is being updated – which are listings of potential heritage sites. Heritage registers are useful tools for heritage and urban planners to flag properties, so the soft arts of persuasion can be applied in the context of other land-use approvals. Some B.C. municipalities require the approval of owners even to be listed on their heritage registers, which seems to me the architectural equivalent of asking words if they want to be in the dictionary.

The District of West Vancouver debated adding the Graham residence to its draft heritage register shortly before it came down, but was reluctant to do so without the support of owner Shiraz Lalji, and everyone involved knew this would be symbolic, not actual protection. West Vancouver city planners and politicians did everything they could to hang on to the Erickson masterpiece, but in the context of current provincial legislation and funding programs, they had no arrows in their quiver; when it comes to heritage preservation, the province owns the whole armoury.

Soft strategies of moral suasion have had some success, notably the campaign led by Arthur Erickson Conservancy founder Cheryl Cooper to protect his Evergreen Building on West Pender. But crucial to this soft success, says Ms. Cooper, was some hard cash, in the form of valuable Transfer of Development Rights, which can be bought, then moved to another piece of downtown.

But even this device is not available today, as earlier this year Vancouver city council placed a moratorium on the issuance of new TDR agreements, while it examines the large stock of existing credits yet to be plunked down on a downtown peninsula already subject to hyper-development. Vancouver is the only municipality in British Columbia that has developed a density bank system, and incentives like these only work in building-hungry boom times, seemingly about to end.

With the Graham house now gone, preservationists’ worries have moved on to two even more important West Vancouver residences – houses-cum-painting studios with important gardens for artists B. C. Binning and Thomas Gordon Smith.

The self-designed 1942 Binning house – a National Historic site, and arguably the first residence in Canada entirely shaped by the European Modern Movement – was thought to be safe when Jessie Binning’s will stated a first preference to donate the house and garden for permanent use as a scholar’s residence or house-museum preserving the pioneering works of her predeceased husband.

But according to one of her will’s executors and former Erickson partner Geoff Massey, there has been no luck in convincing the likes of the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University or Emily Carr College of Art and Design to take on stewardship of this modest but sublime nexus of art and architecture. “If there was a half million dollars on the table, it could be done,” said Mr. Massey of the funds needed to endow repairs and property taxes, “otherwise, it is going.”

Similarly, and somewhat unbelievably, there is no heritage designation protection or conservation plan in place for the 1964 house designed by Arthur Erickson for Marion and Thomas Gordon Smith, recently named by his architectural peers as one of the top five buildings constructed in Canada in the entire 20th century.

The Smiths still live there, and unlike the willful decline of the Graham property, it has never looked better. However, the Smiths have talked of willing the house and garden to the Vancouver Art Gallery. With VAG’s announcement of their planned construction of what could end up being a quarter-billion-dollar new gallery building, there will be strong pressure to extract the maximum benefit out of the property – by demolishing the house or building on its integral garden.

I know and have chatted with all of our remaining stalwarts of heroic modernism, most well into their 80s: Erickson, Massey and Downs as architects, and the Smiths and the late Jessie Binning as clients. There is often a sheepish tone of resignation in their voices, as if it was inevitable that these markers of their lives and times will be destroyed, the self-consuming monster of modernism moving on to new challenges. These sentiments are understandable, but the duty to preserve these and similar buildings is not for those who made them, but for all of us.

Like many people his age, 83-year-old Arthur Erickson has good days, and he has bad days. I talked to him in both modes recently, and there is one strong word he voiced both times about the demise of the Graham house: “Tragic.”