The latest entry from Changing Vancouver features the Birks Building (what took so long?)
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The Birks Building ranks, we would suggest, alongside the second Hotel Vancouver was the saddest loss of a heritage building in the city.
Full article here.
And the one arguably that set in motion the contemporary heritage movement, so outraged were the citizens at this loss – and the prospect that others, even the Marine Building, could be demolished in the name of progress. The Province brought forward legislation that allowed the designation of the City’s most significant buildings (without the requirement for compensation.)
Birks was the necessary martyr.
(If the reference to Penn Station is obscure, try here. Also in common: both NYC and Vancouver ended up with spectacularly mediocre replacements on critical sites.)
http://www.michaelkluckner.com/bciw1birks.html
I had my office on the fourth floor of the Birk’s building until it was slated to be demolished.
Although the offices were up-dated and very pleasant to work in the entrance foyer and elevators were vintage.
Upon announcement of demolishion Ken Terrise, Bob Williams and I set up the SOB committee. I designed the button image provided by Anne Terrise (thanqxz Anne. Long time no see) illustrated.
We got lots of coverage and but traction.
Us SOB’s organized the downtown march illustrated, headed by Henry Elder (then UBC’s S of A head), all the way up Georgia Street.
We of course met with all the usual suspects including old man Henry Birk’s in his opulent, oversized suite, in the Vancouver hotel (I seriously doubted at the time that he was in control!).
I wondered why such a man needed such a suite and rationalized such people, inheritors of wealth, need something to convince themselves of their over-sized foot-print for, indeed, that incoseqential tower that replaced his iconic structure was the beginning of the failure architecture that has only become more demonstrative since.
I suppose his doppelgänger on Phillips Square Montreal was closer to home!
I cannot fathom how this was allowed to happen. They could have just built on the Strand Theatre site. I work in Pacific Centre and see this corporate vandalism every day.
You’ll also recall that the same era saw the stripping of cornices from traditional / classical looking retail buildings to make them look “modern”. Many of those same buildings still lack cornices today, while others have been restored.
Before that, many classical buildings were regularly demolished and replaced with larger, classical looking buildings. That was “progress”, especially when prime locations were scarce.
The difference in the 1950s and 60s is that the style of the buildings changed – from classical to modernist – so the subjective element of “style”, “fashion” or “heritage” started to factor in.
To date, “heritage” is largely (but not completely) to preserve classically styled buildings. There are some 1960s modernist building that are “heritage”, but the public’s attachment is to the classical limestone and granite edifices.
Today, clean modernist designs of the 1960s and 70s are being decried as plain, boring and have had elements added to them (for new buildings that gave us the Post Modern movement). The gradual degradation and eventual redevelopment of the Eaton’s store is a current example.
So it just comes full circle – demolition and renewal.
Just as surely as you’ll replace your iPhone when the next model arrives, buildings, too, have a programmed obsolescence (who’s renovated a “dated” kitchen?) – just on a slighter longer timescale.