Cooper Cottage

The building located at 2040-2048-2050 Pandora Street is a 1½ storey house (plus basement) in the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia. The building is situated in the centre of its lot, on the south side of the street, mid-block between Semlin Drive and Lakewood Drive.

Built in 1906, Cooper Cottage is valued as one of the earliest known residences built in Cedar Cove, originally an industrial area centred on the waterfront in the eastern extremity of Vancouver, just outside Hastings Townsite. In 1911, the Townsite voted to join the City of Vancouver, prompting its significant residential development and that of Cedar Cove, which would quickly grow into an extension of the Grandview neighbourhood.

The building is the product of pre-World War I, small-scale residential development and contracting, a common, family run enterprise which was pivotal in shaping the Lower Mainland's working class neighbourhoods. Its builders, father and son team Eli and William J. Beam, developed and sold numerous properties in Vancouver, and owned a sash and door factory. The only building on the block for its first two years, this eye-catching home would have showcased the family's sash and door products.

The majority of lots on this block were still empty when in the late 1920s a second, extensive phase of development filled out the block and the rest of the neighbourhood with modest, Craftsman Bungalows. Later, a 1960s zoning change permitted low-rise multifamily dwellings here, and all but two of this block's second phase Bungalows were replaced with apartment buildings. Cooper Cottage is valued for its role in representing the first of three development phases in Grandview-Woodland, all of which are still represented on this block's mixed-era streetscape.

Cooper Cottage also illustrates a significant World War II era phenomenon - the conversion of single-family residences into multiple rental units. While the building exterior retains its distinctive design from 1906, the conversion into a legal triplex in 1942 by the Cooper family, long-term owners and residents (1930-1955), is evident in the triple civic address and the exterior staircase accessing the upper unit.

The residence is a rare example in Vancouver of a small Queen Anne Revival style house with its side-gabled, jerkin head roof, and a curved two-storey bay topped by a gabled bellcast roof centred on the front façade. The home's unique, custom design and decorative details illustrate the builder's remarkable craftsmanship and access to a sophisticated range of building materials and techniques.

The key elements that define the heritage character of Cooper Cottage are:

- Location on Pandora Street in the northern part of the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood of Vancouver

- Continuous residential use

- Queen Anne Revival Style

- Side-gabled, jerkin head roof

- Curved two-storey bay, centred on the front facade, with flared skirt and a cove shingle pattern at the gable. Glazed upper bay has Tuscan-style pilasters framing the front three windows, and the lower bay windows have coloured coloured, diamond-pattern divided lights in the upper sashes.

- Shingle cladding throughout

- Protruding front porch on the east side with ornate, triple columns on the corners, and an oval-light window with art glass on the western wall

- Small back porch with ornate turned column, corner bracket and turned corner ornament

- Front door side lights with art glass

- Abundance of windows on the front; an oval-light window on the west wall; a rectangular art glass window on east wall of entry hall; divided light windows on the covered staircase

- Decorative wood elements such as dentils, brackets, mouldings under windows sills and at wall plane transitions.

- Covered staircase leading from the front porch to the upper floor unit on the exterior east side.

- Two internal brick chimneys with decorative corbelling