Overview
Address
738 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
Neighbourhood
Downtown
type
Commercial
Significance
B: Significant
Description
Finished in 1910, this neo-classical, Edwardian Commercial style building offers a good example of applied masonry with a brick facade and steel structure. The Pacific Building contained the offices of real estate entrepreneur, Alvo von Alvensleben, a German immigrarnt responsible for the construction of a number of buildings along Vancouver’s skyline.
The building has 8 floors and is occupied by offices and shops on ground level.
W. M. Somervell from Seattle designed the building for W. A. Bauer, an Australian railway engineer and land surveyor who came to Canada in 1891. The building applied the most up-to-date construction techniques of the day, hiring the Ferro Concrete Co (based in Cincinnati). The building advertised itself as fire and earthquake proof but the claim has never been tested.
Source
Changing Vancouver blog, Historic West Hastings Walking Tour (VHF), Courtney Stickland "The forgotten front": a walking tour of Vancouver during the First World War (2013)
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