Where’s this, what’s inside, and why does it look like this?
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According to the one discreet sign tucked under the otherwise-anonymous modernist facade at Cordova and Cambie (map here), this is the Allstream building – a company that provides business communications across Canada. Which means it is still performing the function it was built for: electronic connections.
This was originally the CN-CP Telecommunications Building when it replaced the original Stirling Hotel 
in the late 1970s. (The building, then known as the Bronx Hotel, can be seen in this 1891 shot of Cambie and Cordova, right.) While its sleek modernism seems out of place at this corner where Gastown, Crosstown and the Downtown East Side all interface, there’s nonetheless a lot of ‘fit’ here. The building curves nicely where Cordova makes a subtle shift, it holds both the streetface and the building height of its neighbours, and there’s even a little cornice up top.
Inside was where the last days of the telegraph could be found – tons of mechanical switching equipment to serve that now-ancient format which evolved into other faster, tinier ways of transmitting information on cable that still finds a home inside this structure.
Two reasons why it’s worth noting. First, it was the early manifestation of Project 200 – a massive private-sector urban-renewal scheme that would have demolished everything between Woodwards and Granville Street and replaced it all with this:
Secondly, it was where one of Campbell’s favourite photo-ops was taken – a shot of him wielding a sledge hammer and wrecking ball. In the same mode, this shot below was taken at the beginning of demolition of Block 52 – a key component of the Pacific Centre development, facilitated by the city – and that probably best captures the zeitgeist: Mayor Tom Campbell, perched on a wrecking ball, waving a hardhat, welcoming progress on the ruins of the past. 
Campbell died this month, with only a few testimonials to his time. He will probably best be remembered for his battle with the hippie culture and the Georgia Straight, but his real legacy, as developer and mayor, is the ‘modernist’ agenda – from West End highrises to Pacific Centre to freeways – that he constructed or promoted.
Much of that was fortunately stopped in its tracks with the election of the TEAM majority in 1972. Otherwise, a good part of old Vancouver would look rather like what we see on this streetcorner today.
Thanks also to John Atkin.
2 comments
Discrete, as in separate? Or discreet?
The characterization of Tom Campbell as hippie hater who loved freeways is a narrative created for him by a generation of baby boom opinion leaders in media and politics who followed him. Campbell was apparently never interested in what the public thought about him, which might explain this unflattering view of the man that Gord Price echoes.
I’ve no connection to Mayor Campbell or his term in office, but it does occur to me that there are some fantastic attributes of modern day Vancouver that we now take for granted – such as our coveted West End neighbourhood – were largely built during his term as mayor of Vancouver.
For the urbanists who visit this website the West End is a celebrated example of city building. The attempt to increase density in other nodes around Vancouver – Kits, Langara, 10th Avenue in Point Grey – were halted after Tom Campbell’s term in office. By contrast, the TEAM government was elected on a promise to return Vancouver to a less dense form, expressed in the form of development in south False Creek and Champlain Heights. Good luck trying to find a residential highrise built in Vancouver during the 70s & 80s.
For another viewpoint read Sam Sullivan’s obituary for Campbell.
http://www.citycaucus.com/2012/02/on-hearing-of-the-death-of-tom-campbell