An architectural wander through Vancouver

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Yes, there are self-guided walking tours offered by all sorts of fine architectural aficionados, but – and you can call me old school – when I’m in a new city I usually go with the official city website.

In Vancouver, that choice didn’t go well.

First, let me apologize: I really should’ve made an effort to see Canada’s third-largest city years ago. It’s wonderful, walkable, easy to navigate, and, if one is a fan of 20th- and 21st-century architecture, as I am, it’s packed with goodies. Oh, and there were also some big land masses in the distance, but I decided not to get too close to those (I was impressed by the palm trees, however, who knew?).

Without a car and only one day to myself in the financial district, I did a quick search and found the city of Vancouver’s 4.12-kilometre “Downtown Architecture Walk,” which would take me right past my hotel at West Georgia Street and Howe Street to Moshe Safdie’s Colosseum-inspired library, and, eventually, to see Ron Thom’s epic, lozenge-shaped Modernist headquarters for B.C. Hydro, now a condominium called “The Electra.”

The first mistake, which was the city’s, was to use a jogging app, RunGo, to host. My impression upon loading it was that I absolutely, positively, had to blow past my hotel and walk quite a distance to a starting/ending point at West Pender Street and Cambie Street. This was so that the app could ‘track’ me as I ‘jogged,’ while giving me encouraging voice-prompts as I hit targets – ”You’ve run a half-kilometre!” – and so on, which had nothing to do with architecture. Much more helpful would’ve been voice prompts to warn me I was coming up to a site, since I walked past the first few and had to backtrack to see them.

And perhaps this second mistake was my own, but, when I would get to a point of interest and touch the impossibly tiny little ‘i’ that marked it on my phone, I couldn’t figure out how to expand the text box to read the entire description. So, as I passed the BC Permanent Building – 1907, I read this:

“This edifice is a small-scale but well ex …”

I take it back: a gorilla could’ve stabbed at my phone’s screen and not been rewarded with any more information (when I got back to my hotel, I tried on my laptop: no problem, I learned there was a “Tiffany style stained-glass dome” and all sorts of other things). The incomplete text boxes didn’t disappear afterward, either, which made for a bit of clutter onscreen.

But I won’t bore you any longer with that. After walking past a few banks, I stopped to admire the “brutish style” Harbour Centre/Vancouver Lookout (1974-77) on West Hastings Street and learned it was the tallest building in the city from 1977 to 2001. However, I had to Google it later to learn it was by Toronto’s WZMH Architects. Next, I came upon the city’s main post office from 1910 to 1958, designed by David Ewart. Not on the tour, but just as interesting, is the massive, mid-century modern building that replaced it at 349 W. Georgia St. by McCarter, Nairne & Partners, which has been lovingly preserved by QuadReal and tenant Amazon.

Across the street, and, again, not on the tour, a building caught my eye: the modernist United Kingdom Building at 409 Granville St. With its delicate features, nice spandrel panels, and support columns pushed to the interior (to make corners ‘vanish’) I thought it was Peter Dickinson, but learned later it was by Winnipeg-born Douglas Colborne Simpson (1916-1967).

The tour took me through the lovely atrium of the Sinclair Centre, across the windswept 1970s Granville Square Plaza, where I spied an enormous cruise ship, and then passed by the neo-Georgian Vancouver Club.

A highlight for me came next. A number of years ago, when I asked Art Deco Architecture Across Canada author Tim Morawetz if, hypothetically, all art deco buildings in Canada were threatened and he could save only one, he chose Vancouver’s Marine Building. And now I know why. The 1930 building is as good as anything in New York or Chicago. It sings.

As I walked on Burrard Street I was surprised, again, to see some fairly anonymous glass towers featured, but not the 1960s-80s Bentall Centre and its great Picasso-like sculpture/fountain by George Tsutakawa.

I was happy to stroll past the Hotel Vancouver (1929-39) before the long walk to see Mr. Thom’s (former) B.C. Electric Building, which a bunch of lucky Vancouverites now get to call home. How does one describe a piece by an artist-genius fully spreading his wings? Or the sublime mosaic tile work done by artist B.C. Binning?

As a counterpoint to the lightness and beauty of Mr. Thom, next up was the Brutalist weight of Arthur Erickson’s Robson Square and Law Courts (1979-83), which, in the hands of almost anyone else, would not have come out as well.

I’ve got to skip ahead here. Yes, I went past the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Edwardian/Baroque Hudson’s Bay Building and then to Mr. Safdie’s library – it’s great and silly and very postmodern – but, overall, I must say the good intentions of the walk’s author(s) was sullied by the wrong tool. The jogging focus of the app meant I had to hit start in order for it to track where I’d walked – and if I paused to duck in to grab a coffee and forgot to press play again, well, you know – and, as mentioned before, the tiny icons were ill-suited to architecture.

While I haven’t used either, a quick search turned up GPSmyCity or PocketSights – both seem like a better choice.

Find the tour here: https://vancouver.ca/parks-recreation-culture/downtown-architectural-walk.aspx

While not on that route, I made it a priority one evening to go out of my way to dine near Bjarke Ingel’s Vancouver House, which was worth the walk.

Help! My contact information is out of date. If you know (or are) the owners of the Victoria Trend House at 3516 Richmond Rd., Saanich or the Vancouver Trend House at 4342 Sklyline Dr. in North Vancouver, please let me know.