Description of Historic Place

Located close to the corner of Union Street and Jackson Avenue, the historic place consists of the house and property at 511 Union Street. It comprises the original two-storey house built in the late nineteenth century, and a substantial addition built at the rear, constructed after World War I. A small garden and a low wall demarcate the front boundary.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the house at 511 Union Street lies in its architectural, contextual, and associative significance.

The architecture of 511 Union Street is representative of working-class housing erected during Vancouver’s first decade. Constructed in 1890-91 as a single-family residence, it was then used as a boarding house, and later extended and converted into a multi-unit lodging house for Chinese working men. 511 Union Street is significant because it is a largely intact example of two generations of purpose-built working-class housing, first for Caucasian and then for Chinese residents of Vancouver. The design of the 1921-22 addition exemplifies how builders responded to discriminatory federal policies, which excluded immigration and culminated in the Chinese Immigrant Act of 1923, by creating rows of small rooms for single Chinese working men.

The contextual and associative values lie in its location in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood, which has a long-standing history as a working-class area and is closely associated with Vancouver’s Chinese community.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of 511 Union Street’s architectural design include:

- its location in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood, with its longstanding associations with the area’s Chinese community
- its two-storey residential form, expressed by the asymmetrical composition of the Union Street elevation, derived from the balance of the simple gabled front and the recessed open porch
- the alignment of elements of the building and front garden to emphasize the approach to the front door
- the setback from the street allowing for a front garden
- the two single-flue chimneys that indicate the positions of the 1890-91 house’s original cooking and heating facilities
- the octagonal shingled front gable, the moulded woodwork in the window and eaves, and the diagonally-boarded transom panels of the upper front windows of the 1890-91 house
- the plan and design of the 1921-22 addition, including its arrangement of sleeping rooms, and the regular rows of windows on the west and east elevations that illuminate the sleeping rooms and communal corridors respectively
- the square-edge singled rear gable and the virtual absence of ornament on the 1921-22 addition
- the evidence of the building’s phased development