Vancouver Voyager: Under the Bridge

Monday, May 2, 2011

Under the Bridge

While walking along Pacific Boulevard I passed under the Granville Street Bridge and happened upon this colourful, exciting mural. Hope you like it as much as I do.

These are shots of Templeton Secondary School located at 727 Templeton Drive. This was one of the first junior high schools in BC, opening in the fall of 1927. (The first was opened in Penticton in 1926 and Kitsilano Junior High opened in 1927)

The school was built between the years of 1926 to 1928 with an extension being added in 1962. It is a three-storey, reinforced- concrete structure with a flat roof and no basement. The original portion is clad in roughcast stucco and painted in the school's colours of purple and grey.

Architects Sharp and Thompson worked with the School Board's architect F.A.A. Barrs to create this example of the proto-modernist aesthetic of the 1920s. The building is simply treated with large banks of windows and the pier-and-spandrel treatment that reflects the concrete structural frame.

From the information I read the interior is also something to be seen. The school has wide hallways and high ceilings as well as panelled wood doors with wood surrounds (some with textured glazing and original hardware), scalloped arches in hallways, loudspeakers, paired glazed double doors with transoms, chamfered walls, running courses below ceilings and at hip-height, ventilation panels, and recesses for fire extinguishers.

The classrooms have recessed doors, some connecting classrooms, some slate boards, built-in storage units with original hardware, glazed sliding-door bookshelves and window ledges.

The old gymnasium has clerestory windows (pronounced clear story this is a wall that has a band of windows at the top), wall mounted metal gym equipment, ropes and benches while the new gymnasium has cinder-blocks, open-span ceilings, cast in place concrete bleachers and a retractable full height dividing wall.

The auditorium has a stage with flanking access stairs, a curved upper balcony with seating, a projection room with recessed utility doors and the original hardware.

The stairwells have wraparound wooden banisters with curved handrails and banks of windows for natural light.

There are also recessed and arched alcoves, fire-break pocket door between original and new buildings and terrazzo floors. The school still has the original lockers; the home economics room with corner kitchen layouts and built-ins, sewing room with cupboards for ironing board, irons and notions, laundry chutes in science room. Templeton Secondary sounds like a perfect mixture of old and new.