THEN & NOW
/1629 Comox in 1966 (Vancouver Archives)
1629 COMOX
A House That Crowe Built
House builder A.J. Crowe was a West End resident and in 1906 built one of his first homes at 1629 Comox. At the time he lived nearby, at 1110 Nelson, having at sometime moved from New Westminster where the 1891 census reports that, age 34, he lived with his wife Annie and their two young sons. Both he and Annie were transplants from Nova Scotia.
The 1911 census suggests a clue as to why Crowe had spent $800 raising his Nelson Street house the year before, and three years before that had built an addition. The Crowe family had increased from two sons to five sons and three daughters. Plus three lodgers.
One wonders why he didn’t build a new house for his family from scratch, as he built at least 30 others during his long career as builder/developer.
This Comox Street house was built in a style and along a pattern that Crowe repeated around the city.
Arthur Kendall, a doctor, first purchased the house and lived there from 1907 until his death in 1910, after which Mrs. Arthur Kendall was listed as the head of household for several years. The 1911 census identifies her as Vina, aged 32 with her seven-year-old son, Lloyd Arthur, and three-year-old twins, Francis and Kathleen.
The Westender One at 1631 Comox.
Filling in any spare nooks and crannies were four lodgers and Vina's cousin, William Woodley.
Dr. Kendall was an avid mountaineer and an obituary in a climbing magazine reported: "In Vancouver, on October 8, 1910, occurred the death of Dr. A. L. Kendall, a most highly valued member of the Alpine Club of Canada. Dr. Kendall was born at Rockland, Ontario, in 1876. He lived in Texas for a few years, but his heart was always Canadian, and he returned to his mother country in 1889, making his home in Sapperton, B.C., where he lived for some ten years. He attended High School in New Westminster and entered McGill University in 1897, graduating in 1901. In 1902 he married Miss C. Woodley of Moose Jaw, and settled in Cloverdale, B.C. During the early 1900s he studied special branches of his profession in the hospitals of Boston, Chicago and other great cities. Finally he settled in Vancouver, where his fine record in major surgical operations gave ever promise of a most distinguished career.”
The last time Vina Kendall appears in the street directory is in 1922, the year she married Matthew Jones, who was 15 years younger, in Victoria.
In 1931 the Vancouver Sun reported A. J. Crowe’s death, age 79, at his son’s home on West Sixth Avenue, and that he was survived by three daughters and four sons, noting that three sons “… were in the Great War, and Bert died in 1917 at Vimy Ridge.”
This 1966 photo of the house was from the sale offer, in which it was described as “an older style revenue house”. The rent income was $305 a month. The owner, Mrs. Isabel Coe was hoping to sell at $26,500; cash only.
In 1981 the house was replaced by a four-story wood frame strata building called Westender One, with the address now 1631 Comox. A current listing for a two-bedroom, 825 square-foot condo in the building was for $639,000.
The West End Journal would like to acknowledge the works of several Vancouver authors whose books have served as source material for this series. These include: Eve Lazarus (Every Place Has A Story) the late Chuck Davis (The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver ); Michael Kluckner (Vancouver Remembered and many other volumes); Dane Purvey and John Belshaw (Vancouver Noir - 1930 - 1960); Aaron Chapman (Vancouver Vice and others); Tom Snyders & Jennifer O’Rourke (Namely Vancouver - A Hidden History of Vancouver Place Names); John Atkin (Heritage Walks Around Vancouver and others); and many guest speakers over the years at the Vancouver Historical Society and Heritage Vancouver. If you are interested in Vancouver history, the above are your points of entry.
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Kevin Dale McKeown
Editor & Publisher
editor@thewestendjournal.ca
