THEN & NOW
/The Horse Show Building / Stanley Park Armouries
The Horse Show Building at Georgia & Gilford in 1910. (W.J. Cairns Photo courtesy of Vancouver City Archives)
Many longtime West Enders remember the southwest corner of Georgia and Gilford as a verdant vacant lot, which it was until 2007 when the elegant Laguna Parkside apartment tower was erected on the site, with its entrance on Alberni. But real old-timers can recall the terrible fire of March, 1960, which razed the nearly fifty-year-old structure that had occupied that block since its construction in 1908 / 1909 — originally known as The Horse Show Building.
Shortly after the fire of March 18, 1960. (Vancouver City Archives Photo)
For high society in old Vancouver, the annual Horse Show was a major event on the annual social calendar. The first show was held in the Beatty Street Armoury in 1908, but the 1,400 seat venue wasn’t quite up to handling the crowds that wanted to attend. And so it was that the Horse Show Association, comprised of members of the Vancouver Hunt Club (those were the days!) purchased four lots at the southwest corner of Georgia and Gilford and built a huge auditorium designed by Seattle architect Warren H. Milner.
Laguna Parkside.
The new venue had a horse show audience capacity of 3,500. With chairs arranged on the floor for concerts, the capacity increased to between six and seven thousand.
By the end of World War I the building had been adapted for military use and became known as The Stanley Park Armouries, later the home of the Vancouver Regiment of the Irish Fusiliers of Canada.
The Armouries remained in use as a regimental headquarters and mixed-use venue through the Second World War and the 1950s — until March 18, 1960 when disaster struck.
March 17 was, of course, St. Patrick’s Day, and the officers and men of the Irish Fusiliers held their weekly parade in the building and lingered into the evening to celebrate Ireland’s great holiday. Sometime early in the morning of March 18 a fire broke out, destroying the wooden structure within an hour. Firefighters were able to prevent the fire from spreading to surrounding buildings, but the regimental museum’s entire collection of badges, swords, headgear, trophies, flags, and band instruments was lost.
The lot remained empty, owned for many years by a branch of the noted Sir Run Run Shaw’s family, until 2007, when the Laguna Parkside was built.
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.
