Holland Block — Vancouver, BC
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Dunbar Loop
N 49° 17.071 W 123° 06.630
10U E 491963 N 5459091
In 1867 Captain Edward Stamp established his lumber mill on Burrard Inlet. Quickly a town sprang up to the west. When the Canadian Pacific Railway surveyed streets in the mid-1880s they created some triangle building lots. This is one of them.
Waymark Code: WM11FGF
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Date Posted: 10/14/2019
Views: 5
The south shore of Burrard Inlet became a lumber mill community in 1867 when Captain Edward Stamp established the Stamps Mill. However, he insisted that no alcohol could be sold within a mile of the mill.
So, a pubkeeper known as "Gassy" Jack Deighton opened his salon at the current intersection of Water and Carrell streets, just beyond the one-mile boundary alcohol-free zone.
Quickly a town built west from the saloon following the shoreline of Burrard Inlet. Water Street got its name from being right on the water's edge.
The town of Granville was often referred to as Gastown in honour of Gassy Jack's long-winded conversations as kept the throats wet with various beverages. But the town grew very slowly until the mid-1880s when the Canadian Pacific Railway selected this sleepy hamlet as the western terminus of Canada's first transcontinental railway.
The CPR was keen to take advantage of the large land it acquired to help fund the construction. So it asked the surveyor Lauchlan Hamilton in 1885 to survey the streets for its expected metropolis on Canada's West Coast.
Hamilton respected the existing land plots but the result was a series of triangled shaped properties along Cordova Street including this one.
By 1892 the Holland Block, the current structure, was completed on this property at Water and Cordova streets. The City of Vancouver's website says this about the Holland Block.
Holland Block - 1891-1892
This flatiron Italianate Victorian building was constructed to [maximise] the lot shape. Its triangular structure is the result of the old Gastown street survey meeting the newer CPR land grant street survey. The main floor has [cast-iron] pillars while the oriel windows maximize floor space and light on the upper floors.