Barclay Heritage Square

The city of Vancouver is located in a popular region in North America that is known for beautiful scenery, cultural diversity and historic residential areas. Vancouver proudly boasts several such neighborhoods, which have been the most populated on the continent for the later part of the 20th century and beyond. One of the most famous and distinctive neighborhoods is the Barclay Heritage Square, a virtual jewel of historic Victorian gardens, benches, even a gazebo that encompasses a single city block. It is all situated modestly among the residential streets of the neighborhood just west of the downtown core, which is most commonly known as the West End.

The earliest record of settlement in this region involved three men known as "The Three Greenhorns": John Morton, William Hailstone, and Samuel Brighouse. Morton was from a family of potters and recognized that the clay of the West End was best for making bricks, and the area came to be known at this time as "The Brickmakers Claim". (Hull and Soule 1974, p.20-21). Their attempts at a business venture in stonework failed, and much of the land that they purchased became the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). When the railway reached Vancouver, many CPR executives were intrigued with the beauty of the West End and chose major locations on which to build their residences. This began the trend that still continues today in Vancouver's West End as this location becomes more and more popular. The result is that the West End continues to be primarily composed of residential neighborhoods. (Bingham 1996, p.5).

The area that would come to be known as "Barclay Heritage Square" was the city block bordered by Nicola Street, Broughton Street, Haro Street, and Barclay Street. (City of Vancouver). There were ten residential homes on this block originally, of different sizes and styles but all were originated from the time period; turn of the century and Victorian, including the famous Roedde House. (Allen 1982, p.93). In the early 1900s, the entire West End was already well-developed and landscaped for residential living, including single family homes with well treated lawns and parks that included green spaces and park benches. By the 1930s, this demographic changed. The owners of the houses were converting their homes to accommodate temporary boarders or individual suites for vacationers. As Snyders and O'Rouke state, "a time when the well-to-do were moving to Shaugnessy or other upscale neighborhoods, and their massive family were frequently subdivided."(Snyders and O'Rouke 2001, p.28).

Many of the buildings that still survive on the borders of Barclay Heritage Square served this purpose. The owners of the residences changed several times between 1940 and 1970, as well as the surrounding architecture and landscape. This was especially true immediately after World War II, when concrete high rises gradually began to replace much of the single family homes that mostly stood abandoned now, some purchased by the city for the use of low-income housing (Bingham 1996, p.25). By the time the 1970s had arrived, local residents were becoming concerned about the steady loss of the area's historic residences and gardens. In November of 1977, the Art Council's Heritage Committee organized a conference called "New Life for Old Buildings." One of the attendees, Peter Neive Cotton, would set the stage for what Barclay Heritage Square would someday become. (Snyders and O'Rouke 2001, p.27).

Cotton was a Victorian restoration architect, and was popular amongst local residents for his advice. Initially, he was only consulted about the preservation of the Roedde House, a Victorian manor that still stands on the corner of Barclay and Broughton. It was Cotton who first suggested that several of the historic buildings and gardens that lined Barclay and Haro should be preserved along with the historic mansion. It wasn't until 1979 that Jaques Dalibard, the Executive Director of Heritage Canada, visited the city block that the City had dubbed "Park Site 19" to offer his own recommendations. Like Cotton, he was also impressed by the Victorian homes and suggested that they be purchased and restored as well, rather than destroyed as the City Park's Board planned. There was already a green space and the partial remains of an Edwardian garden in the centre of the block, and the original plan was to just expand the green space. Dalibard, however, had a vision of expanding, restoring and preserving the Edwardian garden, including unique fixtures such as a fountain or a bird bath and geometric flower arrangements. (Allen 1982, p.33).

The Barclay Heritage Square of today retains this arrangement. The landscape integrates the small, private gardens of the remaining residences to the amenities of a larger, well-tended but fully restored and historically accurate park. On March 8, 1983, after years