Canadian skylines of the past

[Chadillaccc]

My favorite historic Calgary shot yet...



http://www.glenbow.org/collections/s...960s/index.cfm

http://www.glenbow.org/collections/s...960s/index.cfm


and a map from the same era...


http://www.glenbow.org/collections/s...960s/index.cfm

[J.OT13]

That first Calgary pic you posted from Trans Canada has a very SW U.S./Texas feel. Why does it look like a desert city? It seems so green and alive nowadays.

[Chadillaccc]

That's because our climate borders on semi-arid. Urban renewal projects like planting trees along sidewalks and "renaturalizing" areas along rivers probably weren't started by that time. It's most certainly not a desert city, but any city can look like a desert if there are no trees around.

[J.OT13]

Cool to see those pictures of Calgary as the boom town oil city of the 60s-80s but I must say, it looks much better overall today. Not just because of the huge increase in modern towers, but thanks to the greening initiatives.

[Trans Canada]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That first Calgary pic you posted from Trans Canada has a very SW U.S./Texas feel. Why does it look like a desert city? It seems so green and alive nowadays.

That photo's taken in the winter but most of the snow has melted leaving just dead grass and dirt on the ground. Lots of dirt on the roads/parking lots too because instead of plowing the roads they just dump some dirt everywhere.

Calgary's chinooks are a great break from the cold of winter but the city can look pretty ugly when the snow melts.

Originally Posted by franktko

Got to start somewhere


Source Voir http://voir.ca/voir-la-vie/art-de-vi...-est-une-idee/

Wow, cool photo. I think there was another one posted a couple pages back with the bridge a bit further along in construction. I love looking at landmark structures under construction - this bridge, Montreal or Toronto's big office towers, WTC in New York, etc. They're so ingrained in my perception of each city that it's hard to imagine the city without them.

[Trans Canada]

1930
Collection Michel-Bazinet, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...ugust_1930.jpg


1963
Gabor Szilasi for the Quebec Ministry of Highways, Archives nationales du Québec (Montréal). http://bilan.usherbrooke.ca/bilan/pa...nts/22096.html

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Maybe it's the graininess of the pic, but it looks like Calgary had a dense, old warehouse district running southeast of the CP rail corridor.

From my recollection, there are still some fragments, but nothing as complete as what you see in that picture.

And that residential district in the bottom left has been completely obliterated, right?

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Maybe it's the graininess of the pic, but it looks like Calgary had a dense, old warehouse district running southeast of the CP rail corridor.

From my recollection, there are still some fragments, but nothing as complete as what you see in that picture.

And that residential district in the bottom left has been completely obliterated, right?

There are still a few good examples of those warehouses remaining.

The residential district south of it was largely bulldozed, but replaced with a much higher density district that looks like this.

Quite a bit like what happened in Vancouver's West End.

[WhipperSnapper]

Think the angle of the photo gives an illusion of a higher density of warehouses. As far as i can gather, quite a few full blocks still exist in the Beltline. The houses fared much worse.

[niwell]

The single family in the extreme lower left of the picture is pretty much all gone. Demolished for future stampede ground expansions which never happened IIRC. There are a few new developments (including Calgary's tallest condo), but still mainly parking lots in that area.

http://goo.gl/maps/3nBSH

[Monolith]

View of downtown buildings along Burrard Street looking North, Feb 1966, City of Vancouver by vancouverbyte, on Flickr


Granville Street, TD Tower under construction, 1970 Al Ingram, City of Vancouver by vancouverbyte, on Flickr


Three Bentall Centre & BMO main branch under construction, 1972ish, Al Ingram City of Vancouver by vancouverbyte, on Flickr


Vancouver False Creek, 1980's Al Ingram, City of Vancouver by vancouverbyte, on Flickr

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Maybe it's the graininess of the pic, but it looks like Calgary had a dense, old warehouse district running southeast of the CP rail corridor.

From my recollection, there are still some fragments, but nothing as complete as what you see in that picture.

And that residential district in the bottom left has been completely obliterated, right?

The SFH area in the pic has been mostly destroyed and replaced with either parking lots, office buildings, or high density towers, while I'd say a good 60 - 70% of the warehouse district survived and has been repurposed. Those two school houses in the bottom left corner are still around as well and have been incorporated into the Guardian/Arriva high density block (the block will hold around 1500 people once the Guardians are complete) and have been converted into office space.

[hipster duck]

It's all good.

Urban renewal is a lot less tragic in Canada than it is in the US, because we know that that part of Calgary will eventually redevelop into a denser, more urban and probably more architecturally noteworthy area than the frame house neighbourhood it replaced. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. Did those people on the right-hand side of the photograph ever think that their humble homes would one day be the site of giant skyscrapers designed by international architects?

[Chadillaccc]

Haha the good news is that almost all of the parking lots Downtown/Beltline have proposals or pending proposals on them. With the downturn, many of them won't happen as soon as expected, but at least something is in the works. I just hope that we keep the heritage that we have and stop allowing developers (such as the developer of the Bow) to take away our beautiful old buildings. This is the hotel that the city allowed the developers of the Bow to take down, under the "promise" of them rebuilding it. I mean, I know it's not architecturally amazing or anything, but it was definitely worth saving in a city that has so few of its original major hotels left.


http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...countdown-1934

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ab443/arch5.html


Every single brick is in a warehouse somewhere, but I have doubts that we will ever see it rebuilt now. They have turned the site into some sort of abysmal "temporary" park, consisting of a giant deck.

[niwell]

^Wasn't part of the deal for the Bow that they would rebuild it? But that didn't happen - I'm not entirely clear not the reason why. At the time I remember lack of demand for office space being an excuse but that seems to fall flat now.

[Govertical]

God I really appreciate the york now, never cared for it until its been gone. didn't someone say that they had to start reconstruction within 2 years of the Bow opening?

[logan5]

Never noticed this part of Calgary before. 11 ave se definitely has the possibility to be the centrepiece of a good urban neighbourhood similar to Yaletown. I presume development in this area is rolling along just as fast or faster than the much hyped east village.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by niwell

^Wasn't part of the deal for the Bow that they would rebuild it? But that didn't happen - I'm not entirely clear not the reason why. At the time I remember lack of demand for office space being an excuse but that seems to fall flat now.

Lack of demand for office space... so the city could handle a 1.7 million square feet skyscraper, but the 60,000 square foot re-built building would have been the straw that broke the camel's back? Makes sense to me!

If a City comes up with a jackassery of a "compromise" like this, they should have a strict timeline and bad ass consequences for not meeting it. Sure you can tear it down, but it HAS to be back up within 1 year of the completion of your office tower, otherwise you will be fined 10 million dollars per year until it goes up. And if you have some sort of "bad luck" such as losing the bricks in a warehouse fire or an "accident" with the truck on the way back to the site, 100 million dollar fine!

[Boris2k7]

Originally Posted by logan5

Never noticed this part of Calgary before. 11 ave se definitely has the possibility to be the centrepiece of a good urban neighbourhood similar to Yaletown. I presume development in this area is rolling along just as fast or faster than the much hyped east village.

Redevelopment in the East Beltline started ahead of East Village with Arriva (construction timeline 2005-2007) and the Cowboys Casino (2008) but the recession bankrupted Torode and put a halt on the second and third Arriva towers (which are now Guardian) and the Stampede may or may not build any other parts of their current expansion plan before they eventually go back to the drawing board. There are a handful of properties in the area that have proposals -- a hotel and a Brad Lamb project -- but they are several years off from any sort of construction start if they ever get there. A Calgary Transit Maintenance Facility also takes up a lot of valuable land in the area and it has hindered development. Additionally, there were some additions to the warehouse district along the tracks -- including a new police district office that mimics the buildings around it.

At the same time that things were slowing down south of the tracks, things were heating up in East Village. In 2007 the City created the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) to oversee East Village redevelopment, and in 2008 the City created the Rivers District plan and assigned a Community Revitalization Levy (a TIF) to finance it. The City gave CMLC about $300 Million and the organization spent a few years raising the floodplain, creating new streets and sidewalks, improving lighting standards and street furniture, building out the riverwalk, and courting developers. This is the ONLY area of Calgary to receive such a concerted effort, and the results speak for themselves -- East Village IS ON FIRE. It helps that there are hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the area for public buildings besides the money already spent on infrastructure.

Overall, I would say that East Village is well ahead in the game right now -- but East Beltline has more long-term potential as a mixed-use area and will have a much larger population at build-out.

[Spring2008]

Originally Posted by logan5

Never noticed this part of Calgary before. 11 ave se definitely has the possibility to be the centrepiece of a good urban neighbourhood similar to Yaletown. I presume development in this area is rolling along just as fast or faster than the much hyped east village.

There's more retail along the western end of both 11th ave and 10th than the eastern side.

The Beltline has seen a lot more development than EV, almost 50 towers built or u/c over the past couple 3 year cycles, and there's plans for almost every vacant parcel. EV gets a lot of attention because it pretty much started from scratch, and CMLC has pumped a huge amount of infrastructure money into. Plus the vision is pretty exciting. We'll see what unfolds with this grim economic outlook for the prairies though.