Pacific Transfer Company Building

This three-storey, stone and brick former transfer warehouse was built in 1901 for Hugh E. McDonald’s Pacific Transfer Company.

The arrangement of doors and windows on the front and rear facades of this building reflects the former functional arrangements of a transfer warehouse. The unusually tall doors flanking the main elevation, and the windows now glazed with glass blocks, probably reflect the need for access and stabling for McDonald’s 100 horses.

The wide central doorways at front and rear facilitated the passage, and loading from the warehouse above, of carts and (after the sale of the horses in 1920) trucks through the building. The upper storeys, architecturally more typical of the Edwardian Commercial style, housed the goods for transfer, and on the top floor, hay and straw for the horses.

In the mid 1950s, the building was adapted to workshops. It also had a radio tower for Spilsbury and Tindall Ltd. (the important British Columbia radio communications pioneer) Spilsbury and Tindall Ltd.’s radio telephones opened communication lifelines along the BC coast and to logging camps throughout the region.

Source

Canada's Historic Places

More information

http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=2741