Pacific Transfer Company Building

The heritage value of the Pacific Transfer Company Building resides in its history of use and its built form.

The construction of the building at 120 East Cordova Street in 1901, for Vancouverite Hugh E. McDonald's Pacific Transfer Company, demonstrates particularly well a key role of the commercial district as a local distribution centre for goods arriving by ship and rail. This role relates in turn to Vancouver's function as the destination for goods produced in eastern Canada, as well as the province's distribution centre for locally produced material.

The arrangement of doors and windows on the front and rear facades of this building is of value for reflecting the former functional arrangements of a transfer warehouse. The wide central doorways at front and rear facilitated the passage, and loading from the warehouse above, of carts and (after the sale of the horses in 1920) trucks through the building. The unusually tall doors flanking the main elevation, and the windows now glazed with glass blocks, probably reflect the need for access and stabling for McDonald's 100 horses. The upper storeys, architecturally more typical of the Edwardian Commercial style, housed the goods for transfer, and on the top floor, hay and straw for the horses.

The adaptation of the building in the mid-1950s to workshops, and the erection of a rooftop radio mast array, for Spilsbury and Tindall Ltd. (the important British Columbia radio communications pioneer) consolidates its significance. Spilsbury and Tindall's radio telephones opened communication lifelines along the BC coast and to logging camps throughout the region. In 1993, A.J. (Jim) Spilsbury received the Order of British Columbia for his significant contribution to the development of the Province.