Description du lieu patrimonial

The Boulder Hotel is a three storey, stone-faced commercial building, located at the northwest corner of West Cordova and Carrall Streets, in the historic district of Gastown.

Valeur patrimoniale

Gastown is the historic core of Vancouver, and is the city's earliest, most historic area of commercial buildings and warehouses. The Boulder Hotel is valued as an early Gastown hotel, representative of the area's seasonal population in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Vancouver emerged as western Canada's predominant commercial centre. Hotels such as this provided both short and long-term lodging, serving primarily those who worked in the seasonal resource trades such as fishing and logging. Many of these hotels had combined functions of commercial services on the ground floor and lodging rooms on the upper floors, which contributed to the lively street life in Gastown.

The Boulder Hotel is significant as one a series of buildings in Gastown built by Arthur G. Ferguson, one of the city's pioneer landowners and developers. Ferguson built a successive series of buildings and named each one, in turn, the 'Ferguson Block.' As a result there are a number of buildings in the area that were known by that name at one time during their history.

The Boulder Hotel is also valued for its association with Robert Mackay Fripp (1858-1917), a leading architect of the time and an outspoken proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Unlike the Victorian complexity of some of his work, the Boulder Hotel is simple and understated, reflecting the Arts and Crafts tradition of the use of natural materials in an honest manner. It was one of the earliest buildings in Vancouver to have plain rectangular sash windows set into a rough-dressed masonry wall.

The addition of the third floor to the Boulder Hotel prior to 1910 indicates the growth and expansion evident during the pre-First World War era. This site was also significant for serving for a number of years as the West Cordova Street branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, indicating the need for local financial institutions and services in the Gastown area, especially as the main business district started to shift westwards.

Source: City of Vancouver, Heritage Planning Street Files

Éléments caractéristiques

The character-defining elements of the Boulder Hotel include:
- spatial relationship to other late Victorian and Edwardian era commercial buildings
- location, close to Maple Tree Square, in close proximity to the waterfront of Burrard Inlet and the Canadian Pacific Railway yard
- siting on the property lines, with no setbacks
- massive cubic form, prominent scale, flat roof and regular massing, the result of an extra storey being added to the original two-storey structure
- masonry construction: two main facades of coursed ashlar rough-dressed sandstone with granite foundation blocks; single sandstone blocks spanning upper floor window openings; continuous running band of window sill blocks; smooth-dressed sandstone cornice over main entry; and common red brick construction of secondary facades
- double-hung 1-over-1 wood-sash windows on upper storeys
- rectangular ground level openings, with wooden windows sections and transoms
- side entrance to upper floors with wooden transom and granite steps