Posted Dec 30, 2021, 7:07 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 9,593
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Quote:
Originally Posted by officedweller
You can see the foundations being laid for the Royal Bank office building at Robson & Granville
(where the Best Buy / Winners atrium is loacted now).
Civic Auditorium = Queen E Theatre proposal
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I found an article about the project. It was also a new central library in the 10 storey building.
Quote:
On Nov. 1, 1949 Vancouver Mayor Charles Thompson unveiled plans for a new civic centre downtown.
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“(A) super-auditorium emerged from the dreamworld today in the form of concrete, ambitious plans for a six million dollar, block-square project in the heart of the downtown sector,” The Sun reported.
“Years of hope and months of planning crystallized in a joint announcement today by Mayor Charles Thompson and Hugh A. Martin, chairman and spearhead of the Civic Auditorium Committee.
“The project: a $6 million library-auditorium-radio centre. The site: The block just south of the provincial courthouse bounded by Robson, Hornby, Howe and Smithe.”
The story came with a Tony Archer photo of the proposal, and it looks so cool you can’t believe it wasn’t built.
The library was to be located in a 10-storey building along Robson, the CBC’s local broadcasting studio was to be along Howe, and the southern end of the site would have included an arts complex that looks very similar to today’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
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The design was by Fred Lasserre, head of UBC’s faculty of architecture, and was very 1949 modern.
“Completely functional, it embodies the best features of contemporary European and British Columbian architecture, yet is distinctively British Columbian,” said The Sun.
“Much of the design for the centre was inspired by New York’s Rockefeller Centre … (and project head Martin said) the project can play the same part in Vancouver’s social life that Rockefeller Centre has in New York.”
The library was to occupy the bottom three floors of the 10-storey building, which had an estimated cost of $1.9 million. The remainder of the structure was to be rented out as offices.
Tony Archer photo-illustration of how a 1949 proposal for a civic centre at Robson and Howe would have looked downtown. From the Nov. 1, 1949 Vancouver Sun.
Tony Archer photo-illustration of how a 1949 proposal for a civic centre at Robson and Howe would have looked downtown. From the Nov. 1, 1949 Vancouver Sun.
The CBC studios would have cost $520,000, and included a restaurant in a public courtyard behind it. There is a fantastic Archer pic in the Vancouver Archives of the building, which was low slung and featured a pair of arrows on either side of giant letters reading “CBC.”
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The arts part of the complex included two theatres. The bigger one had 3,200 seats and cost $1.45 million.
The smaller one was dubbed the Little Theatre, presumably because it would have been the new home for the long-standing Vancouver Little Theatre group. It would have had 700 seats, been adaptable for use as a radio or TV studio, and had an estimated cost of $720,000.
There would also have been two levels of underground parking for 1,000 cars.
“Total cost of all building construction amounts to $4,940,000, and estimated cost of land to be purchased is $800,000,” The Sun reported.
Thompson said the complex would be built by 1951. But it soon came under attack.
“Ald. Halford D. Wilson was openly critical of the project as not furnishing the type of facility the city needs,” The Sun reported on Nov. 2.
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“’What we hoped for was an all-purpose auditorium, capable of seating upwards of 10,000 people for conventions and other attractions. All we’re getting for an auditorium is another theatre.”
The Sun also noted there was opposition from “downtown interests” who argued the city would lose lucrative tax revenue by building west of Granville. Another “likely source of opposition” was private radio stations that would object to so much money being spent on a CBC building.
The opposition won the argument and Thompson’s civic centre was never built. But Vancouver did eventually get all its elements, in different places.
A new four-storey library opened at Burrard and Robson in 1957, the 2,900-seat Queen Elizabeth Theatre was opened at Georgia and Hamilton in 1959, and the CBC finally built a new Vancouver headquarters at 700 Hamilton in 1975.
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https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...orium-downtown
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