Did Victoria Street really have underground shops? - Kamloops, BC - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

Ellis Block - 371 Victoria Street - 1914

This is one of Kamloops' finest downtown brick business blocks. It was built in 1914 by G. W. and R. Godman as an office and commercial building. A few years previous, the Ellis family had moved to Kamloops from San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. The father, W. J. Ellis, opened a garage and machine shop on Lorne Street which remained in operation until 1982. One of the sons, W.O. Ellis, became a pharmacist and in 1917 formed a partnership with A. Galloway. They opened an office and pharmacy on the ground floor of the Godmans' block.

The Galloway-Ellis Drugstore continued in operation on this site under various owners until 1994. The name of the business block was changed to the Ellis Block in 1951 when W.O. Ellis bought the building.

This block was built by Kamloops contractors Johnston & Gill using their own signature bricks. It is a two-storey building with basement. On the east side, the main entrance is flanked by two large granite Doric columns. Step back to appreciate the brick frieze and ornamental parapet along the top edge of the building.
From a plaque at the site

It turns out that this building hides the answer to what is and isn't a Kamloops urban myth. The belief was that there was a labyrinth of tunnels connecting underground shops all over the downtown area of Kamloops. The truth was a bit less spectacular, and the Kamloops Daily News, in November of 2010, went underground to learn the truth. Their story follows.

Did Victoria Street really have
underground shops?

November 9, 2010 01:00 AM

According to Elisabeth Duckworth, manager of Kamloops Museum and Archives, at least one section of Victoria Street shows evidence there was once a collection of stores or shops below the sidewalk.

That section is the Ellis Block, at the corner of Victoria Street and Fourth Avenue, which is probably best known today as the Zack's coffee shop building.

Back in 1914, when the Ellis Block was built, it wasn't joined to any buildings on Victoria Street, as it appears to be today.

"The building blocks used to be separated by little alleyways," said Duckworth, referring to narrow walkways that ran perpendicular to Victoria Street.

These walkways - at least the one that separated the Ellis Block from its then-neighbour -led down to a number of lower-level shops.

"So, under Zack's, if you were to go down to what seems to be the basement, that was a level where there were a few shops," said Duckworth.

"And then there's another basement under there, which is the real basement."

Zack's owner, Kevin Arneil, was kind enough to let our Readers' Reporter crew into the building on Monday so we could see for ourselves.

He showed us a fascinating, and seemingly endless, collection of concrete hallways, tiered passageways and wooden stairways connecting rooms of various sizes - most of which his coffee shop uses for storage.

The alleyway that Duckworth refers to has been enclosed for decades. Today, it could easily be mistaken for a simple hallway if it weren't for the glass blocks in the floor (an architectural technique used to transmit daylight from the sidewalk into the stores below) and what appears to be a covered hatch that once led from street level to a small, narrow room.

There's also another small room with bars on the window. Arneil suspects it was once used as an icebox. It appears to line up with the other rooms connected to the old alleyway.

Interestingly, there are no indications of tunnels leading in or out of the underground Ellis Block, just stairs leading up to the street level.

"You know, it wasn't as if the whole downtown was a honeycomb of tunnels or anything. It was mainly confined, as far as I understand, underneath business blocks," said Duckworth.

"Where the mythology comes in is (in the belief) there's this connecting network of tunnels, and that's not the case, that never was the case."

Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of photos documenting the underground stores beneath Zack's, so we can't tell you much about the kinds of shops that once operated there.

We even tried the building's owner, The Kelson Group, to see if they knew anything about the early years of the Ellis Block - beyond what has been documented.

The building used to house a pharmacy but, aside from that, Ron Fawcett said when he bought the block 25 years ago it did not come with much information about the history of previous tenants.

Arneil, meanwhile, estimates there is about 4,000 square feet of rooms, stairways, hallways and alcoves below his coffee shop.
From the Kamloops Daily News