This Day in History, 1945: Vancouver civic centre proposed, with art gallery, civic theatre and a rink like Maple Leaf Gardens

May 2, 1948 photo of model for a proposed civic centre around Pender and Cambie streets in Vancouver. Note the Sun Tower is in the upper left corner and the old Province newspaper building below it.

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In the late 1920s American planner Hartland Bartholomew put together a comprehensive plan for Vancouver, including a stunning art deco civic centre on Burrard street overlooking False Creek.

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It was never built, but the civic centre concept lived on. On April 20, 1945, a new civic centre proposal was unveiled at West Pender and Cambie streets, above Victory Square.

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“Vancouver’s long-standing dream of a beautiful civic centre in the heart of the city to meet administrative, recreational and cultural needs came closer to realization as moves were made Thursday for action on the recommended central school site,” reported The Vancouver Sun.

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The idea was to tear out “a seven-block dilapidated core” and replace it with “the live heart” of “a beautiful civic centre.”

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Bartholomew and his colleague Russell Riley had come up with the plan, which had been endorsed by Vancouver’s town planning commission, the precursor to today’s Vancouver planning department.

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It was championed by former alderman Harry DeGraves, who had been a civic centre booster since the previous plan was unveiled in 1927.

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The Sun said the plan called for the erection of 12 buildings, including a civic auditorium “to be used for large conventions, automobile and agricultural shows, box lacrosse, boxing and wrestling.”

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Detail from blueprint for a new Vancouver civic centre in the April 20, 1945 Vancouver Sun.

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It also included a new library and archives building, a 3,500-seat civic opera house, and a “modern and larger” Vancouver art gallery and museum.

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There was to be a new general post office, a veterans’ memorial building, a veterans’ rehabilitation building, and a vocational school. There was also to be a curling rink and a pioneers memorial building, “not necessarily a large structure.”

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To top it off, the plan proposed “a large skating and hockey rink constructed along the lines of the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.”

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Oddly, the hockey rink isn’t in a blueprint of the scheme the Sun ran with its story. The blueprint shows the civic centre was to be located between West Pender to the north and West Georgia to the south, Beatty to the east and Homer to the west.

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The blueprint also shows a bus terminal at Georgia and Homer and a large park on the between Dunsmuir and West Georgia north-south and Beatty and Cambie east-west. This was an existing green space, Larwill Park, which would become the bus terminal in 1947.

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The Sun was gung-ho on the civic centre, perhaps because it was to be located across the street from the Sun Tower at Pender and Beatty. The Province newspaper was also a stone’s throw away at Pender and Cambie, kitty-corner to the proposal.