Quote:
...especially one that was so beautifully built
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The 1950s office block was a horrible bunker of a building and easily the greatest singular offense ever against Victoria's grand harbour milieu.
The 1890s post office was actually the first of the grand inner harbour buildings, lest we forget. It was the building that set the stage for the legislative buildings, the Belmont Building, the Empress Hotel, the current Union Club building, and its own 1914 addition.
I wasn't there when the post office building was demolished but I'm not kidding when I say I've lost many a night's sleep pondering it. It's one of the definitive examples of that post-1945 Victorian self-loathing, and it unleashed a decades-long run of tragic demolitions and modernizations that can never be undone.
And much of the self-deprecating rhetoric of that era is STILL alive and well. We heard it during the Janion saga, we heard it during the HBC building saga, we even heard it when the little facade was being preserved as part of the Era on Yates. We've been hearing it during the Northern Junk saga, of course.
The new construction for this project won't be any taller than the 1890s post office building was. But at least it will be allowed to be half-decently attractive and a wee bit showy (like the original), instead of dour and bland (like the 1950s and 1990s incarnations). It would have been nice if they had preserved some of the internal structure of the 1914 wing, but like I say, after everything Victoria has been through, I'll take it.
What was:
1890s:
pic from BC Archives...
1920s:
pic from BC Archives...
1950s:
pic from BC Archives...
1950s (not so easy to find pics even though it looked like this for ~40 years):
1990s faux-historic remodelling:
*****
What's to come (the best thing since the original building):