B.C. Mills Timber and Trading Company
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Volume 15 Number 5 November/December 2006 www.heritagevancouver.org HERITAGE Vanco N e w s l eu t t ev r er Our BC Mills Legacy By Penny Street Above left: Above right: BC Mills Design A From the Settlers’ 1998 Canada Post stamp, Housing in f, between 1904 and 1910, you were homesteading any- Series Ready-Made Houses. Canada Series, “Prefabricated Housing.” “This series of our houses has been One of a pane of 9 stamps to celebrate where in Western Canada, you had a tremendous amount designed with a view of meeting the Canada’s excellence in housing of work to do in your first year if you and your family requirements of the incoming settler or structures. Canada Post emphasized that miner, during the early days of his career Canada had been “an early leader both were going to make a go of it. You had to clear your in a new country, with a small and inex- in the construction of homes from highly land, plant a successful crop, and build a well-insulated home. pensive dwelling which is capable of with- processed wood products, and in the I standing the various changes of climate.” advancement of prefabricated wood If your homestead site was near to a railway line — and Design A cost $100 in 1905. housing. The prefab homes introduced by it likely would be, because you were probably planning to the British Columbia Mills, Timber and Trading Company of Vancouver were a grow grains so you needed to be near a grain elevator — or significant contribution to the evolution a body of water, you could order a prefabricated kit house of Canadian architecture.” from BC Mills Timber and Trading Co. in Vancouver and it would be shipped to you by rail or barge from the BC Mills other end of the spectrum, Design O-O-O in the “Town House Vancouver factory. Series” was two storeys, and included, on the main floor, a BC Mills guaranteed that you would be able to assemble the parlor, a library, a dining room, a kitchen, and a separate house without any high-falutin’ framing or carpentry skills. pantry, and, on the second floor, four bedrooms and a bath- Like today’s Ikea furniture, the house kits came with everything room. BC Mills also manufactured prefab school, church, you needed to complete your house, including numbered, and bank kits. The prefab bank kit was actually their big- pre-painted panels, and a complete set of instructions. They gest seller, and the Bank of Commerce was one of their guaranteed that you could assemble your house with ease. The best customers. 1905 BC Mills catalogue featured houses in the Settlers’ BC Mills prefab kits came with plain panels, panels with Series and the Town House Series. Design A, the smallest doors, and panels with windows. The designs were ingenious. house in the Settlers’ Series, featured a one-room floor plan, Unlike other prefabs in that era, which had a reputation of all “living room,” that measured 12 feet by 12 feet. At the Continued on page 2 BC Mills Legacy Photos: Penny Street continued from cover BC Mills Legacy Today there are but seven. The recent loss of the Salsbury Drive houses makes being hard to heat, drafty, and insub- protecting and saving these remaining stantial, BC Mills panels featured seven critical. weather-tight joints and an innovative insulated design made with two layers • 401 East Waterfront (formerly of wood separated with tar paper and Dunlevy Street) was the general an air space, so they were well-equipped office, showroom, and sales centre Left: 1735 East 1st Avenue to withstand the cold of prairie winters. for BC Mills in Vancouver. Now the Right: 1550 (also known as 1556) Adanac Street Also, there was quality control that building is home to the Flying Angel surpassed that of homes assembled Seafarers Club, a seaport sanctuary for • 1795 Napier Street is Vancouver’s outdoors in the elements; BC Mills seafarers from all over the world. This only remaining BC Mills church. Built panels were assembled and pre-painted is probably the most well preserved in 1908 on the northwest corner of in a nice dry indoor space, in the specimen in Vancouver’s remaining Napier and Salsbury, it was, until 1977, Vancouver factory, before being shipped BC Mills inventory. In 1930, when the Robertson Presbyterian Church, out to the building site. when it changed hands and became BC Mills shipped prefab home kits a Fijian Hindu temple and cul- all over western Canada and as far east tural centre, the “Shiv Mandir Shree as Winnipeg, but as innovative as the Sanatan Dharm Ramayan Mandali of BC Mills prefab design was, the com- Fiji.” The congregation consists of pany overestimated the homesteader about 600 worshippers who trace their market. BC Mills Timber and Trading roots to Fiji. This building is a B on the Left: Flying Angel Seafarers Club Heritage Register. Co. only manufactured and sold pre- Right: 1860 Grant Street fab houses for a few years (from • 1735 East 1st Avenue is Vancouver’s 1904–1910). Although their ideas were the Vancouver Harbour Commission only remaining example of BC Mills precocious, even brilliant, the manu- took over the building, it proudly Design O-O-O, and, although quite facturers made one serious miscalcu- announced: “The site on which the rundown, is an example of one of the lation. It was a grand idea to provide offices are located is one of histori- larger and more elaborate models in easy-to-assemble prefab kits to settlers cal value, for around it was built the the Town House Series. Although clearly — exactly what was needed in the City of Vancouver.” It includes a recognizable as a BC Mills house, it virtually timber-free prairies and the giant vault (shown in the 1906 plans) is not on the Heritage Register. panel design was ideally suited to their and support beams that are 47 feet in • 1550 (also known as 1556) Adanac climate. But the company failed to take length. This building is an A on the Street is Vancouver’s only remaining into account the fact that most of the Heritage Register and is Municipally example of BC Mills Design L-L-L, settlers were “dirt poor” and, much as Designated, but it is located in a vul- another in the Town House Series, also they would have liked to, they couldn’t nerable spot, right on the edge of the clearly recognizable as BC Mills. It is afford to purchase prefab homes. Port of Vancouver. a B on the Heritage Register but is in In 1974, historians Ted Mills and • 1860 Grant Street was built for need of restoration. Deryk Holdsworth wrote an occa- Edward Faraday Odlum, an early sional paper in the Canadian Historic Vancouver City Councillor (and also Sites series called “The BC Mills a professor and a realtor). Odlum was Prefabricated System: The Emergence allegedly the one who, reflecting on of Ready-made Buildings in Western the fine views that could be had from Canada.” It contained an almost the slope up from Park Drive (now exhaustive inventory of the BC Mills Commercial Drive), named the neigh- structures still standing (in 1974) in bourhood “Grandview.” This house western Canada, including Vancouver. 515 and 521 Hawks is not on the Heritage Register, but According to their count, there were 14 in Vancouver; they missed three that • 515 and 521 Hawks are both BC we know of, two of which were the Mills structures, built in 1904 for the recently demolished cottages — a pair Hastings Mill yard foreman. The of Design Js — on Salsbury Drive. side-by-side houses, like the now- Interviewed recently, Ted Mills says demolished Salsbury Garden houses, BC Mills structures represent “an 1795 Napier Street represent a common practice where a important historical phenomenon in builder put up a row of between two Vancouver and a step in the evolution it should be. Of those identified thus and five small workers houses and of wood marketing in BC and in the far, this and the two Salsbury houses then, perhaps, lived in one and rented development of a value-added sector of are the only BC Mills structures not the others out. The Hawks Street the BC lumber industry.” mentioned in the 1974 Mills and houses are Bs on the Heritage Register, Holdsworth inventory. and both need some restoration. ADVOCACY UPDATE Salsbury Gardens and BC Mills Houses. It haps a new business could modify the Stadacona Apartments, 601 Bute at is with great sadness we report the demoli- ‘Helen’s’ lettering to a new business name in Melville. Residents report rumours the owner tion of the two BC Mills prefab houses by the the same typography. intends to redevelop this B-Register developer Richard Niebuhr on October 19. Edwardian apartment building within the next The largest of the garden trees, the Butternut ‘Cotswold’ house, 3979 W. Broadway. We two years. It’s on our watch list. and the Cypresses, were also removed. The are monitoring with concern the ‘Cotswold- site had been in imminent danger since Cottage’ style house, a ‘C’ listing on the Victory Square Park. Victory Square is the the September 2006 BC Supreme Court deci- Register. One of three 1930s homes designed former site of the original 1895 Provincial sion ruling against the jurisdiction of the with undulating shingle roofs to resemble Courthouse. Although the structure was Board of Variance to consider 3rd party thatch, this house has been listed for some demolished prior to WWI, the historic perim- appeals.