Welcome to my Neighbourhood - Commercial Drive

Today I am starting something new. Sometimes I will take a walk through a neighbourhood, take photos then tell you a bit about that area. The first area I chose is Commercial Drive. Probably because it is close and I didn't have to walk far. Some of the information I am going to relate, I will have already told you but there will new stuff too.

We are starting our journey on the north end - at Commercial Drive and E Hastings Street. Commercial Drive does extend north past this intersection but for this feature, we aren't going to cover that.


Originally, this area was the skid road on which logs were dragged to the harbour. In 1902, its name was Park Drive because it led to Clark Park - the southern border of Vancouver.

This lot has been vacant the entire time I have lived in this area and that is almost 11 years! I wonder if they will ever build anything there? Probably housing, Vancouver needs a lot of that right now. The building in the photo below is empty and borders the lot, which leads to me guess we might see townhouses or condos built there in the near future.

Older homes along the Drive.

This street was part of the Vancouver-New Westminster Interurban Railway route, which was started by H.V. Edmonds and Mayor David Oppenheimer, among others. The rail line generated a lot of traffic so South Vancouver merged Cedar Cottage Road, Edmund Street and Norfolk Road into Commercial Street in 1910 because they were anticipating a big business boom. (Commercial Street is separate from Commercial Drive) 

Nick's Spaghetti House, reportedly the best pasta in Vancouver.

In 1911, the name of the street changed from Park Drive to Commercial Drive and even back then, it was referred to as 'The Drive', which many people still call it.

There was a proposal in 1982 to rename The Drive, Via Garibaldi in recognition of the large Italian population in this area. The name would also honour the revolutionary patriot, Giusseppe Garibaldi. That idea was quashed due to the cost involved and that fact that there is a street named Garibaldi Drive in the Champlain Heights district of Vancouver.

At one time, there were four streets in Vancouver with the name Park. Now there is only one, in Marpole.

Next door to Nick's is the York Theatre. This theatre has recently been revamped since it was an eyesore for many years before. It has a lot of history though, which I wrote about in a 2010 entry.

Before World War I, there were a group of speculators who attempted to turn the Grandview area - the district that surrounds The Drive - into a real estate area comparable with the West End or Shaughnessy. That idea crumbled with the global financial collapse of 1913.

During the 1920s, this area was a prosperous suburb and not far from the centre of town, Main and Hastings, but the Great Depression changed all that. In addition, the centre of town moved further west. But the area has been left with a large number of historical buildings and homes.

Adanac - a bike friendly street. Want to know how that name came to be?  Spell it backwards!

 Lost on The Drive? Perhaps one of these information stands will help.

 
 The number 20 bus runs along Commercial Drive.

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse of my neighbourhood. I have lots more photos and stories to tell you.

Thanks to the book Namely Vancouver by Tom Snyders and Jennifer O'Rourke for some of the information above as well as Wikipedia for other facts.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Cotton Homes

This simple, box-like shape with a front-gabled roof, and attached porch is an example of a Gabled Vernacular style home. The 1-1/2 storey house is first listed in the 1908 directory as a vacant new building though it was built the year before - no building permit has been found for it.

1329 Cotton Drive saw its first resident in 1909, a hardware merchant named William C. Haycock. In 1910, James McLennan, a carpenter, resided here.

Across the street, at 1330 Cotton Drive, is a house and apartment building listed from 1913 though, once again, no building permits have been found. I am going to talk about the house.

It is another Gable Vernacular Style house - a simple rectangular building with a front-gabled roof and an attached porch. The glassed in area was probably added years ago to create a more usable space. August Yarco, a labourer, had a shack here from 1907 to 1913 and when part of the area was rebuilt into an apartment building, Yarco was hired as a janitor. (I will have to go back to the area and get some photos of the apartment building!)

These two houses, plus others I am featuring, are in the Grandview district. The story goes that the area got that name due to a resident putting up a sign at the interurban stop near his home at Commercial and 1st. The sign read 'Grand View'. Perhaps the resident was a realtor trying to unload property and wanted to make the area sound special.

The view would have been great; it still is at certain spots. The view was a result of the extensive logging of the forests to feed Hastings Saw Mill. The sights residents of the area would have seen then included the small city of Vancouver to the northwest and False Creek, which at the time covered a lot of the area.  

What a sight that must have been! Of course, the view today is mainly of buildings. With the addition of the interurban line in 1892, the village of Vancouver began to grow a little more. Then large homes began being built in the 'Grandview' area. Originally, it was intended to be an upscale district but when the CPR invested $2 million into the Shaugnessy area, making it the place to be, Grandview settled into a comfortable, middle-class area. 

Thanks goes to the Grandview Heritage blog for the information on the homes and to the book Namely Vancouver by Tom Snyders and Jennifer O'Rourke for the information on Grandview. There is more to tell about this district and I will get to it another time.

I hope you find the beauty around you.