53 West Hastings Street

The historic place at 53 West Hastings Street in Vancouver is a five-storey red brick Edwardian commercial building.

The value of 53 West Hastings Street lies in the historic relationship between this area and the economy of early Vancouver, and to Gastown’s history as a mixed-use area. In the late nineteenth century, this area of Vancouver was the centre of commerce and industry.

Designed by well-known architect Thomas Hooper of Hooper and Watkins, the structure was built in 1909 as an apartment block with commercial frontage at street level. Originally known as the Eastern Building, it became the Strathcona Hotel in 1910, with Pierre Paris Shoes occupying the street level for sixty years. Thomas Hooper’s own career echoes that of the boom and bust cycle of British Columbia’s resource-based economy. Having designed hundreds of buildings, traveled extensively in search of commissions, made and lost several fortunes, he died penniless and was buried in an unmarked grave.

The value also lies in the function and the architecture; the building was built to provide housing and retail goods to a largely male population of resource industry workers and commercial travelers. Its design and construction are significant, as they reflect the transition from Victorian styles to the cleaner, more restrained and functional Edwardian style, and solid masonry and steel construction.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

The character-defining elements of 53 West Hastings Street include:

- rectangular form and massing and prominent scale

- built to property line with no setbacks

- external characteristics of the Edwardian style including symmetrical design, brick construction, stone trim, and pattern of fenestration

- classical decorative features, including ribboned swags just below the fifth-floor stepped brickwork, and columns with ionic capitals spanning the third and fourth storeys, and separating each window bay

- stepped ornamental brickwork over the first- and third-storey windows, under the second-storey sills, and below the upper cornice level

- painted sign advertising Pierre Paris Shoes on the east facade

- main floor storefront