2021 – Vancouver – Dominion Building
Image by Stand by Ukraine
Explore 09 May, 2021
The Dominion Building is a thirteen-storey Beaux-Arts style commercial structure on West Hastings Street in Vancouver.
The building is a symbol of early civic pride and an easily recognized Vancouver landmark.
Designed in 1908-1910 by architect J. S. Helyer, it was, at the time, the highest building in the British Empire with a height of 147 feet, 6 inches,
To a steel-framed Chicago-style high rise, Helyer added classical columns, Sullivanesque detailing above the tenth floor, and a Second Empire curved mansard roof.
The interior design was even more unusual: a central core design with a ten-storey spiral staircase.
The Imperial Trust Company could raise only half the 0,000 estimated cost to build and so they floated an issue of bonds to raise the rest.
Citizens were invited to invest in a "building that will be a landmark in the city, and object of pride to every loyal citizen."
When public response was less than satisfactory, the firm arranged a hasty merger with the Dominion Trust Company, which assumed ownership of the building in late 1908.
The building was complete by March 1910, but the anticipated rush of prospective tenants failed to materialize; the central core layout proved inefficient in terms of usable office space.
The Dominion Trust Company, like the Bank of Vancouver – failed, symbolic of the hopes that Vancouver residents had for the city becoming a financial metropolis and their eagerness for speculating in real estate.
Both financial institutions collapsed with the end of the real estate boom and The Dominion Trust Company was forced to sell its only assset – the building – to the Dominion Bank (no relationship).
The Dominion Bank sold the building in 1943 to S. J. Cohen, president of the Army and Navy Department Stores, who intended to convert it into a multi-storey department store at the end of the war. The plan was never carried out.
When the Dominion Bank merged with the Bank of Toronto, a branch of the new Toronto-Dominion Bank was housed in the building.
TRIVIA:
What inspired the Vancouver Fire Department to invest in a motorized aerial ladder? The mansard-roofed Dominion Trust Building.
In January 2008, the Dominion Trust building was granted national registered heritage status.
Today, the Dominion Building is a property of Army & Navy Properties Ltd.
Current tenants include a film production company, clothing designers, record labels, antiquarian booksellers, Kokoro Dance, professional web developers, a dentist, non-profit organizations such as Living Oceans Society and Fair Trade Vancouver, an artist’s supply store, Opus, and a Lebanese restaurant, Nuba, in the basement.
UPDATE:
13 October, 2021
The Toronto-based Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust has bought Vancouver’s Dominion Building from the Cohen family.
Sam Cohen bought the building in 1943 and the family has held it since.
In a statement, Allied CEO Michael Emory said the company would be a “worthy successor owner to Army & Navy Properties in terms of both sensitivity and commitment to Downtown Vancouver.”
Army & Navy Properties is the holding company for assets belonging to Vancouver’s Cohen family, with its genesis being the Army & Navy store opened by Sam Cohen in 1919 — the year after the end of the First World War when there was a lot of military surplus around.
The store, at 44 West Hastings St., stayed open until last year when it closed due in part to the impacts of COVID-19. The building is currently in use as a homeless shelter and will be redeveloped into rental housing.
Army & Navy Properties has significant real estate holdings, including their retail locations in New Westminster, Edmonton and Calgary, and until now the Dominion Building.
