Description of Historic Place

The Brown and Company Warehouse is a three-storey plus lower level commercial masonry building on the north side of Water Street in the historic district of Gastown, now rehabilitated for commercial purposes.

Heritage Value

Gastown is the historic core of Vancouver, and is the city's earliest, most historic area of commercial buildings and warehouses. The Brown and Company Warehouse is representative of the importance of Gastown as the trans-shipment point between the terminus of the railway and Pacific shipping routes, and the consequent expansion of Vancouver into western Canada's predominant commercial centre in the early twentieth century. As Vancouver prospered, a number of warehouses were built on piles on infilled water lots between Water Street and the Canadian Pacific Railway trestle. This was the location of Oscar Brown's fruit business, established here in 1903 in a one-storey building that later had two additional stories constructed on top in 1913, indicating the expansion of the business as the city grew during the boom years prior to the First World War. It also illustrates the expansion of the local food distribution network that developed in response to a rapidly growing population.

Architecturally, the Brown and Company Warehouse is valued as an indicator of the evolution of commercial warehouse architecture in Gastown. This building, with its simple decoration and understated facade, echoes the adjoining Pither and Leiser Warehouse to the east, and illustrates the unified streetscape appearance which resulted from the common architectural vocabulary used during the Edwardian era.

As the warehousing and light industry functions in Gastown became obsolete, a number of early warehouse structures were adapted to other uses. This structure's early adaptive reuse within the context of the redevelopment of Gastown as a heritage district represents the changing nature of the local context and economy from warehousing and manufacturing to commercial, retail and residential uses.

Source: City of Vancouver, Heritage Planning Street Files

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Brown and Company Warehouse include:
- location on the north side of Water Street, in close proximity to the waterfront of Burrard Inlet and the Canadian Pacific Railway yard
- contiguous relationship with 165 Water Street
- siting on the property lines, with no setbacks at the front or sides; original loading bay area at rear
- form, scale and massing as expressed in its three-storey plus lower level height, flat roof and rectangular plan
- Edwardian era design elements, such as the tripartite articulation of the front facade and projecting bracketed sheet metal cornice
- masonry construction: tan brick on the front and rear facades; red mortar joints on the front facade; common red brick on the side facades; and corbelled brick detail above the third storey windows
- heavy timber frame internal structure