THE TOP 10...New Westminster’s Most Endangered Heritage Sites*

(*see links on the left for more information on the top 10)

For several years now, Heritage Vancouver has annually released a list of Top 10 endangered heritage resources in Vancouver. That list includes the Burrard Street bridge, and buildings which are art deco, industrial buildings, old military buildings, and others.  Jim Hutson, a board member of the Heritage Preservation Society, thought it would be a good idea to have a similar list for New Westminster, and encouraged me to take the time to look into it.

It seemed like a simple enough task.  Sadly, it seems there are simply too many endangered heritage sites in the Royal City to include in a Top 10 list.  As a result, many deserving sites could not be included.  Because the goal of this first Top 10 list was to raise awareness, many well-known and topical sites were left out.  Likewise, only one building built after the 1910s has been included, although there are many erving candidates, as the city’s growing art deco movement will point out.  Those art deco buildings are deserving of an article of their own, and the growing interest in art deco heritage invites new discussion on what constitutes heritage in a community, although in Vancouver and across North America, it has long been accepted that heritage means more than just old and Downtown.

It does need to be said that there is much good news in recent years, from the continued restoration and preservation of old houses, to the inclusion of Sapperton’s old Wharf in in the Greenway along the River.  The city has purchased another heritage building along Columbia in the old Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce building, and the Trapp Block, also on Columbia, will be restored and converted into loft apartments.

In compiling this first list of the Top 10, I wanted to look under the proverbial rock, and that endangered heritage right under our noses that we don’t necessarily notice when walking by.

Ultimately, our beloved New Westminster would need more of a Top 20 list than a Top 10 list, as long as the key problems facing heritage identified in this article are not addressed.  While we are a long way from the days when heritage properties were rapidly rushed to demolition as a nuisance and burning down at the rate of one a week, there is still much work to be done.  Sadly, half of the Top 10 listed are endangered despite the ownership or involvement of different levels of government.  A majority have been threatened with destruction.  Dialogue must be initiated on an ongoing basis if this heritage is to be saved, and new approaches need to be taken to preserve and extend the life of important heritage in our city beyond the next few decades.

Cruci dum spiro spero,

Jaimie McEvoy
October 2004

Thanks to Jim Hutson for having the idea and asking me to write this article, to some anonymous helpers who wish to go unnamed but whose selfless and kind help made this project possible, and to those local historians and city staff who assisted in finding the current status of some of the heritage that was studied in preparation for this article, and to the several people who offered suggestions.