Description of Historic Place

The Hampton Hotel, located at 124 Powell Street, is a three-storey rooming house in an ungentrified area of Vancouver's historic Gastown.

Heritage Value

The Hampton Hotel is of value as a component of the business empire of Edgar Baynes, one of early Vancouver's more important business figures; for its connection with Canada's first Japanese-Canadian community; for the way in which its planning and form illustrate the City of Vancouver's 1910 Lodging House By-Law; and for its modern use as safe affordable housing for adults with mental illnesses.

The creation in 1912 of the Hampton Hotel, formerly the Hampton Rooms, illustrates the time during Vancouver's pre-First World War boom period when large numbers of single Japanese males immigrated into Canada, and in particular to Powell Street, to find work. It also reflects the need for accommodation for single males generally, following the City's shanty clearance program in the early-twentieth century.

The formal arrangements of the hotel are of value for illustrating the effects of the City of Vancouver's 1910 Lodging House By-Law. These included provision of individual small rooms, each with natural light and ventilation, with access to communal washing facilities. The by-law was developed in response to the unsanitary, slum-like conditions in Chinatown and other concentrations of single males in the commercial district. Significantly, the building remains in use as boarding rooms and this has permitted the retention of many of the original internal arrangements.

The building was designed, built, and owned by prominent Vancouver architect and businessman Edgar Baynes. It is an important manifestation of the professional and business interests of one of early twentieth-century Vancouver's key business figures. Baynes capitalized on the need for cheap accommodation for newly-arrived male Japanese workers in Vancouver (and Powell Street in particular). The building speaks to Baynes' interest in architectural design, and, in the cheap labour supply and the materials of construction, to his interest in the Vancouver construction industry, and in particular to the Port Haney Brickworks at Maple Ridge, where the facing bricks were made.

The early twenty-first century use of the rooms by the Vancouver Mental Patients Association - for safe affordable housing for adults living with a mental illness - illustrates the significant shift from a policy of exclusion and isolation of the mentally ill to one of integration and care within the community.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Hampton Hotel include:
- Mid-block location
- Occupation of the entire lot
- Massing and form, including lightwells on both party walls
- Uses, including retail space on ground-floor street frontage, and rooms above
- Dark brick street facade
- Division of brick street facade into four slightly recessed bays by rusticated brick pilasters and corbelled heads
- Metal cornice
- Fenestration, including the vertically centre-pivoted sash with two fixed lights above, and the double-hung vertical sliding sash in the lightwells on the party walls
- The clerestorey on the storefront