Popping Up

I started telling you about how Vancouver started to grow in 1886, especially after the city was incorporated in April.

Naturally, the retail trade boomed as the town exploded! Flour was $6 a barrel, rice $2 a sack, corn meal four cents a pound, bacon 15 cents. Rib roasts 12 1/2 cents, leg of mutton 15 cents, cod was five cents, salmon 65 cents, smelts 50 cents a bucket.

Nails sold for $4.50 a keg, cross-cut saws, $1 a foot, sad-irons 10 cents each and grindstones four cents a pound.

Seth Tilly carried newspapers from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Toronto. He even stocked the London News and Graphic! Frank Leslie's Illustrated Paper, Harper's Magazine, Weekly and Bazaar and Gody's Lady Book could also be found at Seth's.

Captain J. K. Ritchie of the Tivoli Saloon introduced the 5-cent schooner of beer and a second lumber mill was being built.

On Water Street, there were 36 considerable buildings - residences, halls, saloons, hotels and stores between Carrall and Cambie. The new Regina Hotel was west of Cambie and that street could boast at having the town's largest structure. The three-storey Carter Hotel. Also on Cambie, the Edinboro Hotel, the Scots Greys and Stag and Pheasant saloons as well as a few stores. Only a few buildings were on Abbott Street at the time. Carrall Street was just behind Water with 29 businesses including the new post office and the Ferguson Block where the CPR and BC Express offices were. Cordova was a residential district.

Hotels and boarding houses were on Hastings Street and Powell was the party street with the Tivoli and Cisne saloons, Fooks Columbia Hall, McLennan and McFeely's tinware and plumbing shop as well as Oppenheimer's store.

At Water and Alexander Streets were Hugh Keefer's store and Andy Linton's boat-building business. Oppenheimer Street (East Cordova) was residential; Westminster Road (Main Street) was nicknamed "Blue Blood Alley" since that is where the upper society lived.

Buildings were popping up on Dupont Street (under the present Georgia Viaduct) and on Pender. These were the main concentrations. Completed and half-completed buildings were scattered all over town. Streets-to-be were rutted trails winding through the stumps. The Eagle and Bridge Hotels rose on the south shore of False Creek.

Thanks to the book Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis by Alan Morely for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.