Description of Historic Place

The Canadian Pacific Telegraph Building is a Romanesque Revival three-storey commercial building, located mid-block on West Hastings Street in Downtown Vancouver. It sits within the context of other commercial buildings of similar scale and age and is consolidated with the Canadian Pacific Railway Building beside it at 440 West Hastings Street.

Heritage Value

Built in 1900-01, the Canadian Pacific Telegraph Building is important for its architectural significance, in particular as an excellent, though late and modestly-sized, example of Romanesque Revival design used for commercial purposes. The Romanesque Revival style was widely employed during this era by the rapidly expanding Canadian Pacific Railway, and the two are still associated together. Typical of the style, the building boasts deeply-recessed, massive, semicircular arched window and doorway treatments and a textured masonry facade. Of particular interest is the row of short Tuscan colonnettes within the cornice below the roofline.

This building also has associative value with the building beside it at 440 West Hastings, which was built in 1936-38 by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Consolidated together on one lot, these two buildings were used by numerous railway and transportation-related companies that maintained offices with representatives or ticketing agents, such as the Northern Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway, Alaska Steamship Company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha Steamship Company and the Western Union Telegraph Company, for nearly seventy years.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Canadian Pacific Telegraph Building include its:
- location on a mid-block lot, abutting neighbouring buildings and built to the front and side property lines
- contribution to the streetscape as part of an unbroken streetwall with continuous retail storefronts
- three-storey height, rectangular plan and cubic massing
- Romanesque Revival style details, such as its row of short, Tuscan colonnettes at the cornice and rounded moulding above windows
- low sloped roof with cornice
- brick and heavy timber-frame construction; granite block foundation; sandstone facade, rusticated on the lower portion of the first storey, with smooth blocks and expressed mortar joints above
- additional exterior details, such as its sill courses of sheet metal on the second and third storeys and at the roofline, block modillion sheet metal cornice, and granite threshold
- regular and nearly symmetrical deeply recessed fenestration: massive semicircular arched openings on the first and third storeys; wood-frame casement windows on third storey with fixed semicircular upper light; and tall, narrow double-assembly double-hung wooden-sash windows on the second storey