{"id":16142,"date":"2013-01-17T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T18:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/?p=16142"},"modified":"2013-01-21T07:09:19","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T15:09:19","slug":"where-to-find-old-photos-of-your-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2013\/01\/17\/where-to-find-old-photos-of-your-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Where to find old photos of your house"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Laz_Southturnerstreet\"
Queen Anne house on South Turner Street in Victoria, ca.1903. Image courtesy of Barb Little.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"EveryPlace_logo\"<\/p>\n

Some of my favourite pictures in Sensational Victoria<\/i> <\/a>are the then and now ones in James Bay. There\u2019s a fabulous archival shot of Carr House on Government Street taken in 1869 and a current photo that doesn\u2019t look all that much different\u2014143 years later. Another find is of the Queen Anne house on South Turner Street built in 1889.<\/p>\n

Derek Hawksley, a set builder and his wife Maureen MacIntosh a prop builder, moved into this funky James Bay house in 1984. The old house had suffered through some horrible renovations over the years and Derek wanted to see what it originally looked like. \u201cWhen we bought it, the walls and the floors were all going in different directions. We signed the papers on the table in the living room, and I put down the pen and it rolled right off,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe both decided it\u2019s the kind of place you\u2019d want to come home to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skene Lowe and James Hall, two well-known photographers of the era, had built the house as a rental property. Through the city directories Derek found that nearly a hundred people had lived there at one point or another, but mostly they were renters and few stayed for more than five years. The few former residents he located weren\u2019t able to help and there were no archival photos on record. Then one day he found an old photo of his house taken around 1911 and its inhabitants left in his mail box. \u201cThe person who was standing on the porch was a gardener at Butchart Gardens where I worked for years and years doing the fireworks, so there was a connection there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The photo of Derek\u2019s house (above) was given to me by Barb Little. She tells me that her husband\u2019s grandparents (Matthew James Little and Mary Jane (Parsell) Little lived here for four years following their marriage in 1903. The folks on the porch, she says, are Mary Jane\u2019s brother Robert Parsell, an engineer with BC Cement with his kids Ella May (born 1899) and Thomas Norman (born 1900).<\/p>\n

Old pictures can really help tell the story of your house. There are thousands of historical photos available through libraries and archives, many are available online. In Vancouver, Special Collections at the VPL has over 90,000 historical photographs. BC Archives has an impressive collection of five million photographs, and the City of Vancouver Archives about 1.5 million. Most municipal archives also have collections. Don\u2019t just stop at your house address though, check under the name of the house if it had one, the street and names of previous owners. It\u2019s worth checking nearby parks, commercial buildings, hotels, schools and other landmarks as early photographers such as Philip Timms and Leonard Frank used to roam the province shooting streetscapes and may have caught your house.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Eve Lazarus<\/strong> is a writer with a passion for history and heritage houses. She is the author of At Home with History: the secrets of Greater Vancouver\u2019s Heritage Houses\u00a0and blogs obsessively about buildings and their genealogies at www.blog.evelazarus.com<\/a>. Her latest book Sensational Victoria: bright lights, red lights, murders, ghosts & gardens launched December 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of my favourite pictures in Sensational Victoria are the then and now ones in James Bay. There\u2019s a fabulous archival shot of Carr House on Government Street taken in 1869 and a current photo that doesn\u2019t look all that much different\u2014143 years later. Another find is of the Queen Anne house on South TurnerContinue reading “Where to find old photos of your house”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6057,"featured_media":16146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11233],"tags":[1079,11168,11182,11181,11169,11178,11179,915,7814,471,10551,23,10635,11175,11177,11180,11171,11173,11176,11172,1600,11170,11174,214,427,479,1347,7829],"class_list":["post-16142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-author","tag-barb-little","tag-bc-cement","tag-carr-house-on-government-street","tag-cement","tag-derek-hawksley","tag-ella-may","tag-engineer","tag-eve-lazarus","tag-every-place-has-a-story","tag-gardener","tag-historical","tag-james-bay","tag-james-hall","tag-leonard-frank","tag-macintosh","tag-mary-jane","tag-matthew-james-little","tag-maureen-macintosh","tag-philip-timms","tag-queen","tag-robert-parsell","tag-thomas-norman","tag-vancouver-2","tag-vancouver-archives","tag-victoria","tag-writer","tag-www-blog-evelazarus-com"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhere to find old photos of your house - Spacing Vancouver<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2013\/01\/17\/where-to-find-old-photos-of-your-house\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where to find old photos of your house - Spacing Vancouver\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some of my favourite pictures in Sensational Victoria are the then and now ones in James Bay. 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