An Urban Palimpsest
Woodwards and Canada’s Poorest Postal Code
Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhood has long been plagued by poverty, disease and addiction. As new development improves the area, the poor are pushed from their homes and community. At the centre of this transformation sits Woodwards: once a department store, now a housing and community hub. Excavating the urban layers puts the current conflict in context — and shows the possibility for inclusive development. This is the first in a four part series exploring the history of the Downtown Eastside through the lens of a single property. Get the rest of the story here: part two, part three, part four.
“Oxys! Oxys! T3s! What do you need?” The cry jolts me out of a daydream as I cross the street at Main and East Hastings in Vancouver, British Columbia. Nobody around me pays the hawker any mind — prescription pills are only one of many options available on this corner. An open-air drug market has thrived at this intersection ever since the Woodward’s department store was redeveloped in 2010, pushing street activity to the east.
This is the Downtown Eastside (DTES), Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhood, notorious in the media as “Canada’s poorest postal code.” The streets are crowded with people milling in front of old brick hotels and warehouses. Stylized cornices tower over the street, witnesses to more than a century of history. Intricately carved stone archways and wide classical pilasters hint at a past of booming business. Today, many windows are glazed with plywood instead of glass and graffiti tags the walls and alleys.
I navigate the sidewalk, dodging shopping carts full of belongings and tarps spread with cellphone chargers for sale. A middle-aged Chinese man in a leather jacket crouches in a doorway, offering packs of cigarettes to passersby. An older Caucasian woman in a motorized wheelchair shares a cigarette and chats with a tall, rake-thin indigenous man with a greying ponytail. At the bustling United We Can bottle exchange depot people enter with garbage bags of dripping recycling and exit with enough change to buy a sandwich, or a pack of cigarettes from the man in the doorway.
A little further west, a two storey rotating neon sign — featuring an inexplicably smiling pig — hangs over the sidewalk. For decades a small butcher shop, Save On Meats recently reopened its doors as a retro-themed diner. Inside, a young bartender with close-cropped hair, rolled t-shirt sleeves and leather boots whips up boozy milkshakes for patrons. A self-described “socially responsible enterprise,” Save On is only one of dozens of new businesses to set up shop in this troubled neighbourhood. This influx of new enterprise is a sign of emerging economic health — and a catalyst for social friction.
In the summer of 2013 police arrested a young woman, Robyn Claire Pickell, for allegedly chaining shut the doors of a new restaurant while staff worked inside. She was part of a small but vocal anti-gentrification protest encamped outside.
Controversy over the future of inner cities is not a phenomenon unique to Vancouver. As the cycle of capital flight and reinvestment turns, inner city real estate markets across North America heat up. In New York City, between 2000 and 2007, 46% of inner city neighbourhoods switched from the bottom to the top half of citywide prices. In Seattle, 55% of inner city neighbourhoods made the same shift.
Changing demographics often drive rising land prices. Low-income and working class people are priced out of their apartments and shops. In their place, wealthier people move into renovated apartments and fashionable businesses. Called “revitalization” by proponents and “displacement” by detractors, these forces are transforming inner city neighbourhoods from Brooklyn to Seattle.
Vancouver’s situation, however, is in many ways unique. Struggling through decades of drug addiction, disease and crumbling infrastructure, something clearly must change for the Downtown Eastside. But a glance at the bustling United We Can bottle depot, or the many colourful street murals, shows a vibrant, healthy community. The question of whether the neighbourhood can improve while protecting this valuable community is an open one.
Layers of Meaning
In tenth century Europe, writing materials were considered so valuable that scribes would erase older manuscripts with a solvent and overwrite them with new text. The result is known as a palimpsest, and this practice was used throughout Europe for centuries.
Today, using a technique known as multispectral imaging, researchers photograph palimpsests through different wavelengths of light. Different wavelengths reveal different layers, and the lost writings of ancient Greek philosophers have been discovered this way.
In many respects, the city of Vancouver is a palimpsest. The dreams, ambitions and fears of countless people have created layers of brick and mortar. Looking at these successive layers of development through different wavelengths reveals the tension between improvement and displacement.
The interesting thing about the site is that it is actually a hinge between the old historical grid and the modern city grid coming in at a different angle.
Coffee and History, part 1
A couple blocks west of Main and Hastings, I look up to see a soaring, flatiron condo tower rising above the four and five story brick buildings. An order of magnitude taller than anything around it, the tower dominates the skyline.
A few lonely green trees poke over the top. Ribbons of red steel trelliswork, emblazoned with a vine motif, run vertically up the building’s side. This is my destination: the Woodwards redevelopment.
An iconic department store for 100 years, Woodwards lay vacant and boarded up for a decade before redevelopment began in 2006. Now a mixed-use complex of market housing, social housing, a university campus, government offices and retail outlets, the project has sparked an economic renaissance in the neighbourhood. Today, many of the heritage buildings around Woodwards contain trendy new restaurants and clothing stores. Since Charles Woodward’s decision to build his flagship department store at the corner of Hastings and Abbot Street in 1903, the building has been a locus of neighbourhood change.
The redevelopment’s covered public entrance lures me inward off Hastings Street as I approach. Narrowing toward a row of glass doors, the red brick walls seem designed to guide pedestrians inside. Through the glass doors, a cavernous interior atrium shelters a basketball court and public benches from Vancouver’s omnipresent drizzle. Exiting through the far side of the atrium, I arrive at the JJ Bean coffee shop in the base of Woodward’s flatiron condo tower. I am here to meet Vancouver historian John Atkin, who has promised to help me peer through the layers of history that shaped this development.
The shop is bustling with activity as groups of sharply dressed young people discuss work or school projects. After grabbing our coffees, Atkin shakes the raindrops off his bright orange jacket — a necessity for those who live through Vancouver’s wet, dark winters. Under a green felt hat, Atkin’s brown eyes and rough stubble give him the appearance of a friendly father figure. We manage to squeeze onto a couple of stools at the front of the shop, looking over the outdoor atrium of the redevelopment complex. Atkin animates his story with vigorous hand gestures, revealing his obvious pleasure in unearthing the neighbourhood’s layers of history.
“I’d far rather go have a coffee at the Ovaltine,” says Vancouver historian John Atkin, “And listen to a bunch of guys talk about the horse races, than pay six bucks for a cup of coffee at some neo-retro place.”
Ordering the Chaos
One hundred and forty-five years ago, nobody could have imagined the cosmopolitan city I walked through to meet Atkin. Economic and social life in the young city, which was then still known as the Granville Townsite, revolved around the nearby Hastings sawmill. The mill, the first non-native settlement in the area, was owned by a group of investors from San Francisco, the largest buyer of British Columbia timber.
“The mill property in this area went as far as what is today Carrall Street,” says Atkin as we continue our conversation. “The mill manager was a bit of a stick in the mud, so no gambling, no drinking, no fighting. That’s why John Deyton, Gassy Jack [a nickname earned for his gift of gab], puts the wife, the dog, the mother, the cousin and the barrel of whiskey in the rowboat. He comes over here and puts it down on the beach.” Gassy Jack used the contents of the barrel of whiskey to pay some local loggers to build his saloon, just across the mill property line.
Gassy Jack’s saloon proved popular among workers interested in the more frowned upon pleasures of life, and a small settlement soon grew along the shoreline. The colonial government of the day was unhappy with this chaotic arrangement of drunken sailors and loggers, and sent a surveyor in 1870. The surveyor, says Atkin, “Lays out the six block town site and that’s what gives order, as [the surveyor] puts it, to the chaos in the forest.”
Using wooden stakes, rope, and hard labour, the colonial surveyor scratched out the first layer of the urban palimpsest in the earth. To this day, the influence of that first layer is visible through the coffee shop’s floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
In an interview with author Robert Enright, Woodwards’ architect Gregory Henriquez said, “The interesting thing about the [site] is that it is actually a hinge between the old historical grid and the modern city grid coming in at a different angle. The resulting flatiron building exists at the point where these two geometries coincide, and reconciles them: the Cordova axis comes sliding through into the center of the site, becomes the atrium and constructs the edge of the flatiron building.”
In Search of Easy Money
Arthur Ross was a realtor and land speculator from Winnipeg. Ross had made and promptly lost a small fortune in the 1880 Winnipeg real estate bubble. Chasing the same easy wealth to Vancouver, he was determined not to repeat his mistakes.
At this time, the CPR railroad was snaking its way across the country, and the company was deciding where to locate its terminus station. The accepted wisdom was that the terminus station would be located at Port Moody, then one of the largest towns, and speculators had been snatching up land in the area.
Eager to capitalize on the enormous economic potential of land surrounding the railway, Ross formed a syndicate of wealthy gentlemen from Victoria. Under Ross’ convincing guidance, the syndicate quietly bought up large tracts of land in what are now downtown Vancouver and the Kitsilano neighbourhood.
In a secret meeting with CPR and the Province, the syndicate offered the railroad huge land concessions. In return, CPR agreed to relocate their terminus station to the Granville Townsite. It was the insider tip of the century. The investors who had sunk their money into Port Moody were furious, while Ross and the syndicate became fabulously wealthy, and the future of Vancouver was assured.
Concrete Ambitions
A talkative barkeep fleeing a puritanical mill operator, a shady land deal, and the ambitions of a national railroad put down layers of brick and mortar that created the fledgling city of Vancouver. In 1891, a middle-aged Charles Woodward arrived from Ontario, seeking prosperity for his dry goods store. Woodward decided that Vancouver was more than a railroad boomtown, and relocated his family and business to a two story brick building at what is now the corner of Main Street and East Georgia. The store took up the first floor, and the family lived above.
According to his family’s biographer, Douglas E. Harker, in 1928 Charles Woodward exuberantly declared to a friend, “In fifty years Vancouver will be the biggest city in Canada!” Although this prediction would fall short of the mark, the Vancouver that Woodward encountered in 1891 was bustling and diverse. In addition to the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-waututh people living in the vicinity, the city was home to Portuguese, Chilean, Hawaiian, Russian, Finnish, Austrian, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Belgian, Swedish, Chinese, American, English, Irish and Scottish residents.
Charles catered to the city’s diverse population, and his business flourished. Quickly ready to expand, Charles joined forces with two other businessmen and began the search for a new site. Surprising everyone (including his business partners), Charles quickly settled on a plot at the corner of Hastings and Abbot Street. “When Woodward put his building up, people really did think he was crazy,” Atkin tells me. “It was a patch of skunk cabbage 8 feet below ground level, and [Hastings] was still not paved.”
Vancouver’s early residents frequented Woodwards to buy everything from groceries, to the latest European fashions, to wood-fired cooking stoves. The flow of customers allowed other retail ventures to prosper east and west along Hastings Street. When the streetcar line was relocated from Cordova to Hastings Street in 1907, Charles’ choice of location was vindicated. With the new streetcar line came even more people, and business boomed. Over the next century, Charles’ three storey brick building expanded many times, slowly consuming surrounding warehouses and hotels until it took up an entire city block.
The physical urban palimpsest of Vancouver is created by the dreams, ambitions and fears of its residents. But this interaction is not a one-way street. Since Charles built his first brick store at Hastings and Abbot, urban form has also influenced social events. Many stories of this influence can be traced back to the city’s first transportation system: streetcars.
To be continued…
Get the rest of the story here: part two, part three, part four.
