Dave HuggardContinuing my exploration of North Vancouver’s Green Necklace trail with a most-obvious aspect of urban wandering: buildings. I’ve been seeking out buildings that are beautiful, ugly, and – surprisingly, the most fun of all – ordinary. Here’s a selection.
There are several beautiful old houses along the Keith Road stretch of the Green Necklace. But they have a downside: the best old houses were built along the main roads at the time, and these have since become the roaring traffic nightmares of driving-obsessed North Vancouver. I was lucky when I drew the Gladwin houses at 254 and 260 Keith Road – the traffic was so bad that no one was even moving. The houses, built in 1908 and 1909 when most traffic ran on hay, are classic Edwardian four-squares, elegant, simple and liveable. Today’s much-maligned developers can claim historical antecedents here – the second Gladwin house was built as a speculative investment. The two houses are now encompassed by a townhouse development, but it seems to be a human-friendly place with car-free walkways and courtyards among the buildings – and residents who talk to oddball sketchers sitting in the middle of their busy road.
The classic beauty of the Green Necklace is Queen Mary elementary school. Built during the first World War, it puts modern factory-style public schools to shame. I would probably still be sitting there drawing all the details, if not for the wise advise of a passing 9-year-old artist: “Don’t do every brick.” I’m always struck by the separate entrances for girls and boys, from a time when that distinction was literally carved in stone. [And for connoisseurs of Hyperart Thomasson – is this one?]
There are lots of competitors for the “most beautiful” building award. Not so for the most ugly. There is a clear winner – the North Shore Alliance Church at 23rd and St. George. It looms and glowers. Its dark cold stained concrete always bring to mind Bruce Cockburn’s lyrics “On the cliff, the U.S. Embassy frowns out over Managua like Dracula’s tower.” Is that a vulture sitting on the roof?
And finally, what turned out to be the most fun of this little series of buildings – looking for the most ordinary building on the 7.5km suburban trail. This gem on East 21st St ticks all the boxes. It’s what I call a “North Vancouver special” – a simple bungalow, with stucco siding on the main floor and clapboard on the ground-level basement, slightly pinkish off-white and a nondescript brown, one rhododendron and one azalea bush, the culturally-mandated Rona latticed fence panels, a saddish lawn, conifers rising in the background, and looming monster houses on each side. Perfect!
