Description of Historic Place

The historic place at 52 Powell Street is a five-storey, mid-block warehouse and wholesale outlet at street level, in the heart of Vancouver's historic Gastown.

Heritage Value

This is a five-storey (including 'cheater floor') warehouse and store, built c.1909-10, almost certainly to the designs of Vancouver architects Parr and Fee, who were noted for their utilitarian facades employing white glazed brick and wide, vertically centre-pivoted sashes. It bears similarities with other Parr and Fee buildings in the area, including the Carlton Hotel at 300 Cambie Street. The presence of a 'cheater floor', that shoe-horned five storeys on to a lot that under planning laws of the time would otherwise only be able to achieve four floors, is unusual outside Vancouver's Chinatown, where the practice was commonplace at this time.

The use of the building by a succession of wholesale grocers and foodstuff distributors echoes a local concentration of such uses, perhaps promoted by this block's direct access to railway sidings.

The present shopfront was designed by Matrix Architecture of Vancouver in 1994, although the third such frontage to have existed, sympathetically responds to its historic context and reflects the strength of City heritage planning policy for the district in the late twentieth century.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

The character defining elements of 52 Powell Street include:
- Location at the heart of Vancouver's historic warehouse district
- Mid-block location
- Prominent pressed-metal cornice
- Plain white glazed brick street elevation with punched windows relieved only by stone sills
- The arrangement of windows, including their sub-division into fixed and opening windows and their method of opening