V VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA The city of Vancouver is truly of the 20th century. When the small town of Granville was incorporated as the city of Vancouver in 1886, it had more in common with American cities west of the Rocky Mountains than with the rest of Canada. San Francisco had served as Vancouver’s main link to the east before the completion of Canada’s transcontinental railway in 1887. Within five years the community of 1000 had grown to nearly 14,000 and the young city became a supply depot and investment center for the Klondike gold rush of 1897–98. From these boomtown beginnings, metropolitan Vancouver is now home to more than 1.8 million people. During the early 20th century, rapid growth fueled construction of neighborhoods along the street railway and interurban lines. Before 1910 many homes were constructed of a prefabricated, insulated, four-foot modular system, designed and manufactured by the B.C.Mills, Timber, and Trading Company. Known as Vancouver Boxes, these efficient and economical houses were characterized by a single story set on a high foundation, a hip roof with dormer windows, and a broad front veranda. From 1910 until the mid-1920s, the most popular house for middle- and lower-class families was a variant of the California bungalow, typified by front gables, exposed rafter ends, and wall brackets, and often chimneys, porch piers, and foundations of rough brick or stone. These Craftsman homes, a small-scale version of the Queen Anne style, were popular amongst the suburban working classes. At one point South Vancouver was expanding at a rate of 200 families per month, all housed in California bungalows. In contrast the region’s affluent families required large formal estates for entertaining. British expatriates had a fondness for Tudor revivals, English country manors, or Arts and Crafts-style homes. In Point Grey and Shaughnessy Heights, abundantly timbered properties were developed according to the tenets of the City Beautiful movement, creating elegant neighborhoods of parks and scenic drives. In both Victoria (the Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:22 26 September 2013 provincial capital) and Vancouver, one of the most sought-after architects of this era was Samuel Maclure, whose early bungalows were modest versions of the California style— single-storied, wood-framed buildings with cross-axial plans and wood-shingle cladding. Influenced by the art and architecture of Charles F.A.Voysey and Frank Lloyd Wright, Maclure often used Tudor-revival facades to mollify his clients while creating modern designs that maximized the potential of the site and locally available materials. Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 860 Thriving business concerns led to the importation of New York and Chicago skyscraper technologies. In 1908 David Spencer and Company built a nine-story department store that was followed by the 13-story Dominion Trust Building in 1910, touted as the most modern and tallest office building in Canada. Originally designed for the Imperial Trust Company by the English-trained architect J.S.Helyer and his son Maurice, the Dominion Trust Building had a brick exterior with yellow terracotta features emulating the detailing of classical orders and was capped by a lofty Second Empire-style roof. Others followed, including the W.T.Whiteway’s World Building (1912), now known as the Old Sun Tower, whose 17-story corner hexagonal office tower eclipsed the Dominion Trust Building; Parr and Fee’s Vancouver Block (1912), with its conspicuous clock atop a central tower; and the Weart Building (1913) by Russell, Babcock and Rice, now known as the Standard Building. The Credit Foncier Franco-Canadien (1914) by H.L.Stevens and Company offers the most faithful emulation of neoclassical detailing. In 1914 architect Francis Swales was commissioned to design the Hotel Vancouver to accommodate business travelers and tourists who used the Canadian Pacific Railway. This impressive assembly of cubic forms with intricate Italianate detailing and overhanging roofs dominated the Vancouver skyline until its controversial demolition in 1949. To serve the competing Canadian National Railway, another Hotel Vancouver was built in the Château style by Archibald and Schofield. Although construction had begun in 1929, it was abandoned during the Great Depression, and the hotel was only completed in time for the 1939 Royal Tour. This building’s facade was an elegant expression of the restrained modern classicism in vogue at the time. Another example was the new Vancouver City Hall (1936), constructed near recently annexed South Vancouver. The architects, Townley and Matheson, adhered to the modern classical precedents established by other government architecture of the time by stepping down a series of symmetrically arranged cubic forms on opposing sides of a large central tower. After World War I, Vancouver’s thriving port facilities had fostered development of the waterfront and the commercial heart of the city, even during the Depression. The most noteworthy building of this period was J.Y.McCarter and George C. Nairne’s Marine Building (1930). Both the 20-story tower and a 10-story wing have richly decorated parapets, executed in pink and green terra-cotta, which contrast with the pale- red brick walls. The striking Art Deco ornamentation incorporates terracotta panels illustrating histories of transportation and the Pacific coast. Economic restraints during World War II limited construction to essential projects. Afterward, however, Vancouver thrived, as veterans returned to the city and foreign demand for Canada’s natural resources escalated. The immigration of British-trained architects and the influence of Walter Gropius, Richard Neutra, and Marcel Breuer encouraged the development of modernist building. In 1946 a department of architecture was established at the University of British Columbia under Frederick Lasserre that Downloaded by [Central Uni Library Bucharest] at 03:22 26 September 2013 began to attract international attention. Efforts of early modernists, such as C.B.K.Van Norman, Robert A.D.Berwick, Bertram C.Binning, and Peter Thornton, were quickly overtaken by younger designers like Charles E. Pratt, Ron Thom, and Fred Hollingsworth, who used new lumber products and prefabricated building systems to create a distinctive West Coast style. With an intricate arrangement of flatroofed terraces stepping down the West Bay hillside, C.E.Pratt demonstrated the West Coast style in a Entries A–Z 861 house designed for lumber company executive William S.Brooks (1947). Wood, steel, stone, and large expanses of glass were presented in a manner that highlighted the interrelationship between the building’s interior and its natural surroundings. In commercial building Semmens and Simpson’s design for the Vancouver offices of Marwell Construction (1950) won the inaugural round of the national Massey Medal awards in 1952. Components of this scrupulously functional design transcended the normal barriers between exterior and interior. The first Vancouver high-rise constructed since the Depression era was the Burrard Building (1956) by C.K.B.Van Norman and Associates, which used a space-saving curtain wall facade. The 1963 competition for a new university in the adjacent city of Burnaby relieved the slow pace of local construction. The successful entry by the Vancouver partnership of Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey proved to be the springboard for Arthur Erickson’s international career. His scheme for Simon Fraser University revolved around a strong central axis linking all campus buildings and incorporating contemporary approaches to pedagogy. In addition to the campus plan, Erickson and Massey designed the Transportation Centre (1965) and Central Mall (1965), in which massive girders of douglas fir and steel supported a glass canopy. The campus has continued to expand; Erickson also designed a university extension to the West Mall (1994) that remains faithful to the form and materials of the original campus. The phenomenal growth of Vancouver forced developers to build vertically. High-rise residential buildings, including Rix Reinecke’s Ocean Towers (1958), began to dominate the West End skyline following a permissive 1956 zoning amendment. The consequences of the rampant demolition of the 1960s and 1970s were not fully appreciated until much of the city’s architectural fabric had been decimated. An emerging heritage conservation movement encouraged reuse and adaptation, one prominent example being the Sylvia Hotel addition, designed by Henriquez Partners. Noted for being the tallest building in the West End until 1958, the Sylvia Court Apartments (1912), designed by W.P. White and converted to a hotel during the 1930s, received heritage designation in 1975. This staid brick, stone, and terra-cotta structure was expanded by Richard Henriquez’s tower in 1987. Economic recession in the 1970s and 1980s proved to be a transitional stage between modernism and regionalism. Just before this construction hiatus, the firm of Rhone and Iredale was awarded the commission for Crown Life Place (1978). Their principal designer, Peter Cardew, created a dramatic V-shaped office tower in the late modern idiom, using green-tinted glass curtain walls. The 1986 Vancouver Centennial and World Exposition spurred development of Granville Island Public Market and transformation of the False Creek industrial area into a livable community. Canada Place (1986) by Zeidler Roberts Partnership hosts public