Description of Historic Place

The Syndicate Block is a two-storey wood frame commercial building, located at the northwest corner of Lonsdale Avenue and West Esplanade in the Lower Lonsdale area of North Vancouver. It has been incorporated into a later, mixed-use development.

Heritage Value

The Syndicate Block, built in 1996, is valued as a faithful reconstruction of the 1903 structure that once stood on this site.

The original Syndicate Block was North Vancouver's first commercial block, dating to the time that ferry service to Vancouver was established and the first mass settlement of the North Shore began. Lower Lonsdale was the major transportation hub on the North Shore at that time.

The earlier building was designed and constructed as the offices of the Western Corporation, one of the first major companies that was established to promote the development of the growing North Vancouver community. Formed in 1902, its activities soon included real estate, land clearing and speculative construction, based on designs produced by the company. The company's buildings were constructed using local materials, which after 1906 were produced at their own sawmill, located within the city.

Other original tenants included McMillan Grocers, the North Vancouver Post Office (1903-1911), and North Vancouver's first dance hall. The Express, North Vancouver's first newspaper, was located in the building from 1905 to 1914.

The reconstructed building, incorporated into a later mixed-use commercial and townhouse development, retains the historic form, scale and character of this significant structure within the context of the Lower Lonsdale area. Some original wooden elements were incorporated in the reconstruction.

Source: City of North Vancouver Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Syndicate Block include its:
- setting within North Vancouver's first commercial district, at the original corner location of the earlier Syndicate Block, built to the front and side property lines
- commercial form, scale and massing as expressed by its two-storey plan, flat roof and chamfered corner
- wood-frame construction, including wooden cladding, window crowns and first and second floor cornices
- large, plate-glass storefront windows, and second-storey double-hung 1-over-1 wooden sash windows
- those decorative and structural wooden elements salvaged from the 1903 Syndicate Block and included in the reconstruction