City of Vancouver
Search
Help

Vancouver Heritage Register

Remaking Vancouver: 1940-1970

Below is a list of themes have been drawn out of the Historical Context Statement [pdf]. When considering the heritage resources of the city in the period 1940-1970, a review of these themes can provide a framework for the consideration of the significance of a particular resource. The list can also be used to consider the degree to which the registered resources together convey the significant aspects of the period.

1. Post-war optimism and positivism

The culture of this time is one of real optimism, and a sense that society could be improved through the application of considered action.

• in urban planning: urban renewal projects, rationalizing of transportation networks that facilitate more volume of traffic with shorter travel times
• in architecture: living and working environments with better natural light and better air and labour-saving devices, all creating better leisure time
• in the arts: art, design and colour all can better people's lives (c.f. Art in Living Group)

2. Westward drift of the city's centre

The centre of the business district moved west during the period 1940-1970, with Modernist office towers, public institutions and utilities being built along Burrard and beyond.

• civic institutions (notably the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library), utilities (notably, BC Hydro) and offices built along the main Burrard Street drew civic energy westward from the Granville Street corridor
• office buildings lining Georgia Steet west of Burrard embodied the westward thrust
• rush of new corporate head offices in the city, particularly corporations in the resource extraction Sector

3. Community housing and infrastructure

Vancouver in the 40s through the 60s was marked a great deal of public and private expenditure in the development of housing and community facilities, made possible by it being an almost unbroken period of prosperity:

• publicly funded: veterans housing, seniors housing, libraries, community centres, firehalls, schools, parks, recreational facilities
• privately funded: churches, synagogues, seniors housing2

4. Densification of the city

Surrounded by the water and other municipalities, Vancouver's growth occurred not so much by spreading as by densification:

• filling in of remaining bush lands with suburban houses and apartments (Oakridge, Arbutus Flats, Renfrew Heights, Champlain Heights)
• apartments replacing houses (Marpole, Kerrisdale, Kitsilano, China Creek)
• mid - to highrise development (West End, Kitsilano, Kerrisdale, Oakridge)

5. Modernizing of the domestic sphere

Vancouver was renowned in the 50s and early 60s for its new Modernist custom-designed suburban houses, which made use of post-and-beam work to generate spaces that were lightfilled and open-planned. With there being a great transfer of wealth down into the middle class in this period, there was a resultant great demand for new and better accommodation in the suburban setting. Popular magazines as well as home exhibitions and model home programs all helped democratize the avant-garde new look of the suburban house.

• custom-designed houses predominantly on the west side of the city
• speculatively built houses with the post-and-beam idiom
• domestic gardens for private use adjacent to main living spaces, which were private from the street and from neighbours

6. A city divided at Main Street

The social divide roughly at Main Street, between the predominantly middle-class British west side and the predominantly working-class and less-British east side, is a factor that affected the way in which the city was developed in this era:

• urban renewal projects planned for the "slums" on the east side
• freeways planned (with attendant house expropriations) for the east side
• race- and economic-base restrictive covenants on some west side properties
• locus of custom houses on the west side

7. Embracing the automobile

Already an essentially suburban city, Vancouver in the decades after the war was rebuilt with the car in mind. All building types from custom houses to public housing, office towers to public museums reveal the underlying pervasive use of the automobile. Whole landscapes were shaped by the embracing of the car culture:

• malls, motels, parkades, drive-in restaurants, car lots
• commercial buildings and signage designed to catch the eye of the driver

8. The end of an era

The time period under study here really comes to a close in Vancouver with the watershed event: the so-called Freeway Debate (1963-68), where public grassroots opposition to the positivist urban renewal theories carried the day.

For more information, contact:

City of Vancouver, Heritage Group - Planning
PH: 604-873-7141 – Email: heritage@vancouver.ca
www.vancouver.ca/register

 

[top]

Questions or Comments? E-mail: planning@vancouver.ca

© 2006 City of Vancouver