Robin Ward's Vancouver

David Mattison is a librarian with the Provincial Archives and Records
Service Library in Victoria.

Vancouver artist Ward, a native of Scotland—where he studied at the
Glasgow School of Art, and drew Glasgow Victorian buildings in the
1970s—specializes in exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of Vancouver
buildings. This collection, based on Ward’s weekly column for the
Vancouver Sun, examines some of the Terminal City’s most important
pieces of architecture—not just the old, but also some of the new.
Accompanying each drawing or series are several paragraphs encapsulating
the building’s history and rendering artistic judgment on each
building’s architecture. At least one building exists only as a
memory: the beloved Birks Building, whose sidewalk clock survived the
wrecker’s ball. Ward rates the Birks Building as “the finest of all
Vancouver’s Edwardian buildings.”

The buildings are nearly all classic landmarks of the Vancouver skyline
or streetscape, ranging from the Art Deco-style Marine Building, opened
in 1930, to the federal government grain elevators of the 1910s, known
as “Steven’s Folly.” While commercial structures predominate, Ward
has not neglected some of Vancouver’s fine churches, such as Holy
Rosary Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, and L’Йglise Saint Paul on
the Mission Reserve in North Vancouver. Only three homes, however, are
included: the 1904 Barclay Manor in the West End (“one of the best
surviving examples in Vancouver” of the Queen Anne style), the Roedde
House (reputedly designed in 1893 by Francis Rattenbury for Gustav
Roedde, the city’s first bookbinder), and the Italianate Hycroft
mansion (built for General Alexander Duncan McRae, a typical Vancouver
capitalist whose home exemplifies the wealth ensconced in Shaughnessy
Heights).

While a glossary of architectural terms is provided for the
uninitiated, a map pinpointing the buildings and a bibliography of
primary and secondary sources on Vancouver’s rich architectural
heritage would have enriched this portfolio. Some secondary sources are
cited on the last page.