Description of Historic Place

The Federal Motor Company Building is located at the northwest corner of Seymour and Drake Streets. The building is a two-storey reinforced concrete structure of industrial-commercial design.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Federal Motor Company Building lies in its contextual, associative, and architectural significance.

Formerly the Federal Motor Company showroom and Chapman's Garage, this familiar landmark at the northwest corner of Seymour and Drake Streets is the most significant survivor of a group of automotive workshops built on the west side of this block of Seymour Street in the early twentieth century. Constructed in 1920, the building is an excellent essay in modernity, incorporating all those features that so inspired early modernists; extensive curtain walling (here expressed as large windows), an expressed reinforced concrete structure, undecorated materials, and design to accommodate the new technology of motor vehicles. It is a very early example for Vancouver of this modern industrial-commercial style, in which the building is reduced solely to its functional elements.

The showroom and garage floors are among the finest surviving commercial-industrial spaces of the Machine Age in downtown Vancouver. The superb original volume of the space is lit by natural light provided by the elegant fenestration, large windows each originally divided into 12 sashes and 96 panes. A ramp entered from the lane provided access to the second-floor garage.

The associative value of the Federal Motor Company Building lies in its relationship to Charles Edward Chapman, who purchased the property in April 1919 and erected the building to accommodate his business. At the time he was the owner of Chapman's Motor and Machine Shop at 1237 Seymour, in an earlier building a few properties to the north. Chapman's firm, the Federal Motor Company manufactured trucks and truck bodies, likely on unfinished vehicle frames brought in from Eastern Canada or the United States.

The building was designed and constructed by contractor and self-styled architect Bedford Davidson (1872-1963). A native of New Brunswick, Davidson moved to British Columbia around the turn of the century. He designed the distinguished Dawson Building (1911) at Main and Hastings Streets and was the contractor for St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Port Moody (1900).

Seymour Street was occupied by many automotive businesses in the middle years of the twentieth century. The property serves as a barometer of the area's sequence of development and land use. This was a part of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) land grant. It was the neighbourhood that was originally known as Yaletown, located close to the CPR yards. It began to be developed in the late 1880s. The original use along this southern portion of Seymour Street was residential, with some ground-level retail commercial. The neighbourhood largely served working people, some of whom were employed by the CPR.

Purpose-built commercial buildings, such as the Federal Motor Company showroom, began to replace the residences along Seymour Street in the 1920s. Automotive facilities were the area's second predominant land use. The Federal Motor Company remained in the building until 1931, sharing ground-floor office space with Federal Finance Company Ltd. and Motor Securities Ltd., which likely financed truck purchases. By 1932, the businesses were replaced by Advanx Ty-Re-Pair, a British Columbia-based franchised tire dealership, which later went under the name Advanx Tire and remained in the building until about 1980.

The building changed use again in 1988, this time to upmarket commercial space. This reflects the third predominant land use in the area, the construction of high-rise residential buildings and the provision of consumer retail on the lower storeys. Despite alterations to the entrance and the addition of skylights in 1988, and a seismic upgrade in 1995 (X-braces can be seen in some windows), the design intention and much of the original fabric on both the exterior and interior remain intact.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the Federal Motor Company Building’s early twentieth century industrial/commercial design include:

- expressed reinforced poured concrete construction
- elegant fenestration featuring large windows divided into 12 sashes and 96 panes
- undecorated materials
- features that reflect automotive manufacturing, including the ramp entered from the lane that provided access to the second-floor garage

Key elements that define the Federal Motor Company Building’s location include:

- its orientation to other buildings along Seymour Street designed to service the automotive industry in the mid-twentieth century.
- its orientation to historic Yaletown and the former Canadian Pacific Railway yards