magnify Hotel Patricia [East Hastings], 1917.

magnify City Museum, Art Gallery and Library, with old City Hall [June 1932].

Community History

The Downtown Eastside has achieved a certain renown across the country. It has been described as the poorest postal code in Canada, and its problems with crime and substance misuse have been topics of national discussion. How did this once vibrant section of the city get this way?

Vancouver's origins are based in this community. Gastown's sawmills helped to spawn a commercial zone along Hastings Street. Eventually, head offices, banks, theatres, hotels and department stores all set up shop there.

It was home to the main library (now the Carnegie Centre) and City Hall. Hastings Street was also a key transportation hub -- a streetcar terminus located at the B.C. Electric Building allowed riders to catch connections to other parts of the city.

magnify Hastings Street at Columbia, looking east [190-?].

magnify Hastings and Carrall, site of a former streetcar terminus.

In 1958, streetcars stopped running in the area, taking away the daily infusion of pedestrians. Soon after, the library moved to the corner of Burrard and Robson, and many head offices began to follow suit. As a result, traffic to the neighbourhood decreased by almost 10,000 people a day. The gradual loss of low-income housing in other parts of town, such as Fairview Slopes and Kitsilano, drove more people to the increasingly affordable Downtown Eastside.

Around the late 1960s, the Eaton's department store moved from its Hastings Street location (site of Simon Fraser University's Harbour Centre campus today) to the newly-built Pacific Centre mall on Granville Street.

By the 1970s, lack of public funding led to the de-institutionalization of thousands of psychiatric patients, who found the Downtown Eastside to be their only affordable housing option.

The drug situation worsened in the late 1980s, when the drug of choice switched from injection-based heroin to cocaine. More people addicted to the drug came into the community and resorted to theft to pay for their habit. This led to an increase in second-hand stores that bought the stolen goods, giving birth to a whole industry and making it very difficult for legitimate businesses to function.

magnify The Woodward's building at Hastings Street and Abbott.

In 1993, the flagship Woodward's department store on Hastings Street went out of business, striking another blow to the community. Many other stores and restaurants in the vicinity closed soon after.

Today, community residents, businesses and service organizations are working with the three levels of government, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, the Four Pillars Coalition, the Vancouver Police Department and the Vancouver Park Board on the Downtown Eastside Revitalization Program.

The main goals of the program are to: reduce crime and drug addiction; provide effective community services to addicts; achieve a balance of housing types; promote economic development; and develop the community's capacity to involve all members of society in addressing the issues that face the DTES.

One of the most important and symbolic projects that aim to further the revitalization efforts is the redevelopment of the Woodward's building.

Prompted by community activism, the Woodward's site will be redeveloped into a mixed-use complex that includes market and non-market housing, retail, community amenity space, a public atrium, space for non-profit organizations, plus the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. 

Community and government initiatives like Woodward's are an important step towards bringing positive changes to the neighbourhood.

© 2009 City of Vancouver

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Last modified: Wednesday, October 14, 2009